Hannibal Review

Read my review of Red Dragon

Read my review of the Silence of the Lambs

So I'm taking a break from the top 1000 films of all time to review the third in the Hannibal Lecter films.  As I have read the book, I wanted to see how the two compared.

Ten years after Dr Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) escaped from prison, it emerges that he is in Florence, posing as a museum curator.  One of his previous would-be victims, the sadistic millionaire Mason Verger (Gary Oldman) is determined to take his revenge on Hannibal by feeding him to his herd of specially bred wild pigs.  Meanwhile, FBI agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) faces a fall from grace after an internal investigation is launched with Justice scumbag Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta) determined to see her fall.

Technically this film is strong.  I've read IMDB reviews praising James Cameron's direction and cinematography and rightly so.  The scenes in Florence and Sardinia look great on screen.  Further praise goes to Hans Zimmer and his musical score.  A lot of the film's gorier scenes, and there are a lot of them, are off-set against a piece of classical music, as if saying that violence murder are forms of art, which to some serial killers they are, but that's for a whole different review.

The performances were also strong.  Anthony Hopkins was great as Lecter, as he had a lot more to do than just stand in a jail cell. I also thought Julianne Moore was good at Starling.  Jodie Foster played Clarice Starling in the Silence of the Lambs, but after she declined to return, Hopkins recommended Julianne Moore.  And I think she made a decent stab at it.  Clarice Starling is ten years older than the last film and Moore played her world-worn cynicism and exasperation of the backstabbing politics of the FBI well.  Speaking of backstabbing politics, Ray Liotta was great as the slimy and under-handed Paul Krendler.  It was a far cry from is role in Goodfellas as Henry Hill.  Gary Oldman, whom you may not have recognised as the deformed Mason Verger, was also creepy and threatening.

As can be expected from all book-to-screen adaptations, a lot was cut out or changed.  The novel Hannibal is close to 600 pages long, so characters and subplots had to be excised for timing and pacing issues.  However, this is where I think the film falls down.  Some of the changes I can understand and respect.  For example, Jack Crawford, Clarice Starling's boss and biggest supporter, was completely omitted from the film, as was the subplot of his wife who was dying from cancer.  The whole investigation about Starling is largely compressed as well.  However, I didn't mind this, as the film wasn't about Starling, but Hannibal.

Except it wasn't about Hannibal.  The novel delves into his backstory with flashbacks to his childhood and sister Mischa, which also explains his motivations for his cannibalism.  But this is entirely absent from the film.  As such, I think a dimension is missing from Hannibal's character.  He's become so iconic due to how interesting of a character he is but when you deny the audience a chance to learn more about him, he loses his depth.

At the film's conclusion, Mason Verger gets his comeuppance by being fed to the pigs, he wanted to feed Hannibal too.  However, it wasn't Hannibal who was responsible for his death or even Starling, but Mason's private doctor Cordell, whom according to many internet summaries has always hated Mason.

However, in the novel, it is Mason's sister Margot who kills him, as she deeply loathes him, stemming from how he raped her as a teenager.  Margot is completely cut from the film, but I think her motivations for killing Mason are far more obvious than Cordell's.  Throughout the film, I never got that Cordell hated Mason.  It more seemed like he was indifferent to him.  This was another poor change.

In a slightly more positive note, the penultimate scene where Hannibal dissects pieces of Krendler's brain, sautes them and then feeds them to him, all in front of the drugged Starling, was brilliantly adapted from the novel.

Whilst the film is strong technically and has good performances, I do think it's suffered from too many changes from the novel, most notably Hannibal Lecter, who goes from a feared serial killer to little more than a card-board cut out.