Went I popped Hannibal Rising into the dvd player I have to be honest, I was hoping it would suck, and banking on hating it.

To a certain extent I was right across the board. Hannibal Rising was a weak pre-quel to the Silence of the Lambs movie which focused on the brilliant portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter by Sir Anthony Hopkins. This film is nothing more than a poorly conceived marketing ploy that would bank on the success of the preceding movies. Probably not much of a shock there.

So where did Hannibal Lecter come from? His mother's vagina of course, but the Lecter we know and love was a small boy growing up during World War 2 in Lithuania. All of his family is killed during the war and he is left to tend to his young sister Mischa. While caring for her, a bunch of looters break into there house, and hold young Hannibal and his sister captive. Dancing a fine line between freezing to death, or dying of starvation, the looters choose to dine on his baby sister.

Flash forward just shy of a decade and Lecter is a young man, who can only remember what happened to he and his sister through nightmares. He leaves his orphanage to reconnect with his ridiculously wealthy Aunt living in Paris. His Aunt, a hot young Japanese woman, of course teaches him the way of the samurai (which for the record can be picked up over a long weekend - see Tom Cruise in the Last Samurai for proof of this). Brilliant move by the way, teaching an angry young teenager how to use a sword, and then also showing how your ancestors used to sever the heads of their opponents and place them before an alter as an honorable prize. So young Hannibal spends some time in the French countryside cutting the heads off of French assholes. This of course shocks his Aunt. DUH?! What the fuck did you think he was gonna do, go and sit in the den and write Haikus with his cock?

Lecter then goes to medical school, for no other reason than to show how he became a doctor. From here Hannibal Rising turns into a revenge fantasy as he carefully singles out the men who abducted him and his sister when they were children and one by one executes them in a manner similar to the one they visited upon his sister. He eventually works his way to the leader of the gang of looters who is now a very successful post WW2 businessman and unleashes untold fury upon him. Prior to the man's demis he let's young Hannibal know that he also ate his sister as he enjoyed some of the very same soup they did. Rage, anger, blah blah blah. Young Hannibal bites more cheeks in this film than Marv Albert did.

The most ridiculous feature of this movie is how many supporting characters had to point out that Hannibal was now a 'monster'. Lines like 'whatever part of that boy was human died long ago in that winter cottage'.... and his Aunt's epic utterance of 'Hannibal, there is nothing left of you for me to love'. We all know he's gonna turn into a psychotic cannibal, but the idea that he is becoming that in this film is force fed to you (no pun intended) at every turn.

Had this film not been a pre-quel to the ultra successful originals, it may have been halfway decent as a stand alone. However it was not, and much in the same way the Star Wars Pre-quels failed, Hannibal Rising suck balls. Big time. Don't waste your time with this crap, especially if you enjoyed the original.

Hamlin Grade: 1


Timothy Dalton is the one true James Bond,
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