Hannibal Rising
Peter Webber
Initial release: February 7, 2007 (France)
I'm just gonna say it. I'm just gonna say it, and you can take it or leave it: I think Hannibal Lecter is genuinely one of the least interesting villains ever created. A manipulative, high-class cannibal who eats the rude is the punchline of a joke, not an object of terror. I think he's best placed as a side character, a dangerous threat that nonetheless is not the primary villain of the piece. This is why he's most effective in The Silence of the Lambs, and why reading the original novel of Hannibal damn near put me to sleep. So with that in mind, you're probably asking, why on God's green Earth would your favorite June put herself through Hannibal Rising, the unasked-for Hannibal Lecter prequel? I was bored, mostly. Also, Nazis getting what's theirs is always a treat.
Hannibal Rising starts off during World War II. A Lithuanian noble family is forced to evacuate their stately castle for their vacation cottage; as the Nazis are pushed back by the Soviets, they wind up killing everyone but a young Hannibal Lecter and his sister Mischa. Not long after, five starving Lithuanian militia in the Waffen-SS come across the cottage, where they murder and eat Mischa. Fast-forward eight years, and a now-teenaged Hannibal, struggling with nightmares in the orphanage his family's castle was turned into, leaves for France to track down his uncle. He doesn't find the uncle, who had passed away, but he does find the young Japanese woman the uncle had married, who teaches him martial arts and sends him to medical school. Over the years he quickly becomes a top student, but his vicious streak is also starting to emerge; after witnessing a condemned war criminal give up the goods after a sodium thiopental injection, he resolves to use it on himself to unlock his memories of what happened that winter during the war. Using his buried memories of the SS troops who ruined his life, he tracks them down one by one and murders them.
While some parts of the plot are straight from a comic book (including a truly absurd moment where a kitchen knife tucked in the back of Lecter's shirt protects him from a bullet) I can't really fault the Nazi-hunting revenge angle. That's fun. But I don't think we needed Hannibal Lecter for this. I don't think we really needed a movie humanizing a highly-manipulative psychopathic cannibal. You could justify it by saying that only Lecter can get away with what he does to these Nazis; I would say that nobody should have to feel bad for doing that shit to Nazis — they're Nazis. This is a movie that would have been better without Hannibal in it.
That's not to say that it's a bad movie. The late great Gaspard Ulliel plays a fantastic Hannibal, though he and his cheekbones much more resemble Mads Mikkelsen than Anthony Hopkins. Hollywood continues its long tradition of casting just whoever for an Asian character, with the Chinese actress Gong Li playing the Japanese Lady Murasaki; nevertheless, she's the far more interesting character, with so much potential effectively abandoned by the end of the film. Rounding out the cast is Dominic West as Inspector Popil, who has a mostly minor role but serves as a sort of Greek Chorus at times to lay commentary on Hannibal and who, or what, he is. The villains include Kevin McKidd (you might know him better as Soap in Call of Duty, but it's his iconic role in Dog Soldiers for me) and the veteran villain-player Richard Brake. There's also Rhys Ifans as the leader of the villains, smooth and sinister, but somewhat generic.
Hannibal Rising is not a bad movie. I wouldn't exactly say it's peak cinema, either, though. At best, I'd say that it's an alright Nazi-murdering romp that really didn't need to be a prequel to a middling movie franchise.
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