The First Chapter In A Legacy

I met Hannibal Rising with a degree of wariness; I find the Hannibal movies to be hit and miss. The first movie Manhunter (Later remade as Red Dragon) was excellent, incredibly stylish and at times very disturbing. Silence Of The Lambs stood out against all the serial killer movie that went before it as a work of art. Hannibal was acceptable, but lacking in areas and at places overlong. And personally I found Red Dragon a pointless abomination of a movie, a pretty much near exact remake of Manhunter with in some ways a second rate cast. Hannibal Rising took a fair whack of abuse when it was released with more people hating it than not.

As Hannibal gets older he is in search of revenge for something that occurred in the house in the woods. This revenge is inspired by abuse his Japanese Aunt receives from a local butcher in a market. It’s at this point that the movie swiftly shifts from first to forth gear. Gaspard Ulliel who plays Hannibal and Li Gong who plays his Aunt Lady Murasaki Shikibu, spring into action in an almost “Crouching Tiger” manner its an incredibly well choreographed fight scene the borders along the lines of being “Amazing”. The fight ends abruptly when the Gendarme arrive, but for Hannibal; this is a battle that is far from over and later tracks down the butcher and takes him out of the equation.

I found the most annoying aspect of the movie was in the casting of Gaspard, while he is an incredibly disturbing looking actor his French accent is at times very difficult to translate, which resulted in quite large sections where I did not really understand what was going on. I found that despite the annoyances it caused it was better to watch the movie with the subtitles on so I could understand what he was saying. Another annoying factor is as I guess a bit of a perfectionist from some angles how Hannibal lost his accent, because by the Red Dagon, Hannibal had lost all essence of an accent sounding perfectly British. I’m sure anyone that spent most of there formative years speaking in a different language will agree it’s difficult to just turn off an accent completely.

• Audio Commentary with Peter Webber & Martha De Laurentiis – A often very blunt and to the point commentary, there are few laughs here but what they lack in humour they make up for in technical knowledge. Its great to hear with passion how some scenes were put together and the decision on whether to include the familiar mouth guard that Hannibal fans will be familiar with. Also the two point out issues that they were less than happy with, slight goofs if you will.