User reviews

I'm a big fan of the whole Lecter story, have read all the books, of which I thought "Hannibal Rising" was an OK (although not great) final installment.

The film is, quite simply, rubbish. It's vanilla. It's beige. It's mediocre, at best. It's pointless. It's the cinematic equivalent of a roller-coaster with no bumps, loops or turns that goes at a moderate pace from start to finish. Save for perhaps one brief moment, there's nothing in the film that brings about any excitement or has any kind of "wow" factor. Hannibal Lecter is surely one of the most intriguing characters ever, yet this movie, which captures his "beginning" story (always the biggest opportunities for a great film story) falls completely flat.

The acting is mediocre at best (awful stereotypical English-with-a-cheesy-foreign-accent stuff), the dialogue is cliché-ridden, stilted and unconvincing, the timing/editing is abysmal, the cinematography provides little in the way of drama, the climax is, admittedly, slightly better, but the ending is near-pointless and feels tacked-on.

Don't bother watching this movie, it does little to further the Lecter anthology.

Just saw that film and was shocked how bad it is. For me living in Lithuania was interesting to see how Hannibal Lecter was spending his childhood in Lithuania. I know it was filmed in Czechia and Lithuania shown in film was unreal, even names are not like we have here -- there are no names Valdis or Kolnas or Bronys and others -- but I can understand it was in the book. I really liked Gaspard Ulliel in "A Very Long Engagement" and Peter's Webber film "Girl with a Pearl Earring" is very good and interesting, but this one is so awful bad. I heard a lot of laughing during the film -- it was so unreal and stupid. To compare with first film about Hannibal Lecter "The Silence of the Lambs" this one is really very poor. Hope there will be no "Hannibal 5"...

Thanks to the meticulously of Jonathan Demme and presence of Anthony Hopkins, who invented the narrative and esthetic's codes of the saga to come (in my opinion, more than Thomas Harris, who's book could have been adapted in many other ways, as the Michael Mann's adaptation of Red Dragon - "Manhunter" - shows it), the series of film that fallows "Silent of the lamb", if they weren't all good ("Red Dragon" is an absolute waste of talent) had the interest to include a most fascinating character : Dr Hannibal Lecter.

In this age of prequels, origins and beginnings, which only shows the incapacity for Hollywood to create a new and original concept, it's not very surprising to see a film that tells us the youth of the distinguish cannibal. And it's not hard to guess that the youth of Dr Lecter wasn't exactly wonderland. So, the good point of this prequel is that it's rather violent, full of perversion and has plenty of great torture scenes. Well, it's seem silly but it's generally what you're looking for when you're watching that kind of movie. And you're even happier when, in bonus of the perversion and of the blood, you also have a good movie. Helas, don't expect any cinematographic interest here : the direction is lame (it looks like a TV movie with its cheap camera effects), the actors are generally bad ( special mention to Anthony Hopkins, who's transparent in this movie, and to Gong Li, who has nothing to do here, and why the hell is she Japanese again ! : and of course, like in all American movie, she's really strong in martian art, and a good and wise teacher to young Lecter), and the script is rather stupid.

Where "The silent of the lamb" and even "Hannibal" manage to stay rather clever and credible about the psychology of Lecter, this origin is so full of historical mistakes (the after WWII France isn't credible at all : the houses interiors, decors and direction panels seems too modern), clichés (see the German army in the beginning : they flew from the Russian front, but they're all SS and all they could think about is to kill some Jews and Gypsies, and everyone speaks English, no matter were you are ! Interesting to notice, however, that everyone has a different accent...), and facilities (Hannibal's reason to become a cannibal are really poor and incredible).

All in all, this movie, enjoyable for one or two torture scenes, is highly dispensable, and, as usual, I strongly recommend you to watch the original movie ("The Silent of the Lamb") rather than this simplification of the character, for you'll learn much more about a psychopath's psychology in the Demme's movie than in this one.

From personal opinion, Hannibal Rising is not the complete and utter abomination as described by a lot of people. It is however still a huge disappointment, and by far the worst of the Hannibal Lecter films(the only one below average too).

Hannibal Rising does look great at least. The locations are really strikingly beautiful, the photography is stylish, the editing tight and the costumes appropriate, with Peter Webber also directing with class. The best scenes in Hannibal Rising are the harrowing World War II parts and the river barge climax has some disturbing tension as well. Gaspard Ulliel does try too hard at times but still plays young Lecter with sinister intensity that's gripping to watch, and Aaron Thomas shows himself as a promising child star as a touching 8 year old Lecter. The film is hauntingly scored too, there are some genuinely moody parts while not overbearing the film at all, and in a way that still sounds engaging.

Gong Li is less successful however, she has a beautiful and dignified look but that doesn't translate in her rather expressionless and flatly delivered acting skills. Dominic West doesn't look very involved at all with his character, like he didn't really want to be there, and seemed a little out of place. Rhys Ifans was the most disappointing, Grutas is far too one-dimensional and cartoonish for a villain- the worst Hannibal Lecter villain by a long way- with no development to him at all, and Ifans plays him with very little sense of threat or subtlety, instead the acting is an uneasy mix of hamming up laughably and underplaying to the point of being dull.

The script is a giant mess throughout, with the dialogue being ludicrous in particularly some of the one-liners, the cringe-worthy dialogue in the butcher scene and a lot of Grutas' dialogue. It also sounded incredibly ham-fisted and underdeveloped, some intriguing ideas here but almost all of them glossed over. The story had its moments, but has more unintentional silliness(i.e. Lecter's first murder), both in the dialogue and the over-the-top murders, than it does suspense, tension and mystery and is often very tediously paced, also not doing a good job at all tying in with the other Hannibal films with some frustratingly sloppy continuity errors. Tension and suspense are minimal apart from the beginning and the climax, the mystery elements are too obvious and too simple to the extent that they don't feel mysterious at all and there was just too much unintentional humour for it to be shocking. It was interesting potentially to see how and why Lecter turned out the way he did, it's just a shame that it was executed badly with the story nothing more than a clichéd and forced revenge story with a mess of done to death clichés and very little that's representative of Hannibal Lecter.

Even worse is how it simplifies one of cinema's most iconic, mysterious and most complex characters/villains, Lecter's reason for revenge was reasonably compelling, though I didn't completely buy that it was solely that for why he became such a monster, and did succeed in garnering some sympathy but the motives for the rest of the murders felt pointless and ridiculous. That he had a back-story wasn't the issue, it was the contradictory and unneeded execution that was. Hannibal Rising also attempts to allude to the other films in the series but instead of being nice homages they just came off cheesily and nonsensically, especially the samurai mask alluding to Silence of the Lambs(which was also a contradiction).

Overall, not terrible but hugely disappointing and the worst of an otherwise solid film series, as heavily flawed as Hannibal was it still had enough solid things to make it watchable. This just had too many frustrations and if it weren't for Lecter's presence you could have sworn it was something else entirely, that's how far removed it felt from the rest of the series. As much as an insult as Hannibal Rising seems to be to fans of the overall series, this review is a judgement on the film purely on its own terms as an overall film. 4/10 Bethany Cox

Rushed out and bought the book so that I'd have it read before it opened in Australia. Finishing it, I thought that the book didn't really do too much damage to the franchise, but really didn't enrich it at all. So off to the movie. It was much the same. Can't complain about the cinematography, direction, etc, etc, and it remains fairly faithful to the book (Harris did do the screenplay, after all). Ultimately though, as with the book, it doesn't add much to the franchise. To be honest, it was quite dull. The acting feels very stilted and there's no real chemistry. Whether you've read the book or not, there's no surprises. Wait for it on DVD, if at all. Probably really only for the fans. A lot of people are saying that it really doesn't explain why Hannibal became what he became; well, it is only a book/movie, and really, don't forget, by and large we don't really know why people in real life become serial killers either.

Yes this movie was a technically well made French film and had a seemingly original setting and plot. Young Lector is a Lithuanian child, son of a nobleman, caught in the retreat of 1944. He and his sister are holed up in a hunting lodge after a fight between a Russian tank and a German Stuka wipes out the rest of his family. There are also the evil SS Germans with local Lithuanian helpers, just as bad but cruder. They end up holed up there in the lodge too as the Russians drive out the retreating Nazis. So as they all starve in the cold, these disreputable knaves decide to feast on the Hannibal's baby sister, not good for a well adjusted childhood. As a result, he goes mute and ends up a prisoner for eight years in a Soviet orphanage set in his family's old house. An older trustee boy torments him but Hannibal escapes but passes up a chance to slice him up. But he snuck into his mother's old room, and after eight years of enemy occupation, the bundle of letters his mother left in the top drawer are still there untouched and unread. Considering what the Soviets did to the Lithuanians, you'd think he would have some reason to get some revenge on them as well as the Nazi collaborators.

After a hair raising escape over the Soviet frontier, which includes a rather uneventful hobo journey through Communist Poland and East Germany, he makes his way to France to look up some French count uncle and his Japanese wife he had a picture of. Naturally, they take him in, but Uncle is dead and his Japanaese wife, a real looker, is still around to provide some well needed maternal, and later more, care to the young waif. Her family was wiped out in Hiroshima so there is that bond, though why Japanese get a pass when they made the Nazis look like amateurs with their depravity in China and other locales is amazing. That topic wasn't expanded but she is also a daughter of some samurai family and ends up teaching young Hannibal all sorts of killing and other martial and discipline skills to further his career. Gver me a break, female ninja in 50s France, did the writer watch "Kill Bill" or read too much anime? She also breaks his mutism down and gets him to speak again, but he still has his horrible nightmare about what happened to his little sister in that lodge when the Lithuanian Nazi collaborators ate her, natch!

Hannibal draws first blood on some fat rude butcher who insulted his aunt/samurai instructor in the market. He is crude, ugly and bigoted, as well as a former Vichyite, so when Hannibal dices up and decapitates him samurai style we can only applaud this well deserved piece of revenge. See a pattern! But this brings us to our Inspector Jaubert, Clarissa Starling detective called Popiel, played by the only actor I recognized, Dominic West.

Then he goes to medical school in Paris where he learns more about human anatomy and nature, especially after helping out in an execution of a Nazi collaborator. Then he dopes himself with truth serum so he can remember the names of the brutes who did his sister in. He remembers they left a bag of loot which included German dog tags in the lodge when they beat a hasty retreat in the face of the Red Army.

Now this is where it gets stupider. Somehow he managed to not only wrangle a French passport but travel unimpeded through two Soviet satellites to Stalinist USSR, where they let this waif in without any scrutiny so he could roam around Lithuania looking for evidence and revenge. Mind you, all visitors to the paranoid, xenophobic Soviet Union better had good reasons to be there and were closely watched. Also, he was an escapee from the country and orphanage yet the only one who noticed him, he is using his original Hannibal Lecter moniker, is a local police chief who was also part of the gang of sister eaters. No other official had any inkling he was an escaped citizen of the worker's paradise up to possible counter revolution or espionage?

Now he turns the table on this police chief, who unwisely confronted him unarmed and alone at the derelict lodge, where he engages in his first act of human gourmet. Now it's all downhill, he has all the identities of these hoods, who had conveniently relocated to France, to get his revenge. In James Bondian fashion, he turns the tables on his would be pursuers, who now know he is after them. Meanwhile Inspector Joubert is still poking around, he knew what Hanny did in Lithuania but vows the guillotine for him if Hanny kills in France, fat chance.

So it is just a bunch of overly clever revenge killing of totally despicable Nazi collaborator, white slaving, drug dealing scum who no one could ever feel sorry for. He is just a clever, erudite avenging angel cleaning up the mess that Nuremberg missed. Hannibal comes out a little daft but otherwise utterly justified and principled and skilled guy, with his Japanese lover now to defend too.

Mr. Harris obviously wrote this as a rejoinder for the cannibal fan club, to make this creep look like a real mensch and man of letters too. As a film by itself, unconnected to the Hannibal saga, it would have been an interesting but ultimately routine revenge flick. But it is a sick,backdated excuse for one of cinema's favorite bad guy, who we are supposed to imagine was a good chap after all. Whether this is a bad thing in any grand moral or cultural way is not addressed in this cheap cash out prequel of the Hannibal saga. Most damning, one can not imagine that this Hannibal turned into the one we all know

I've always been a fan of the Hannibal series. Manhunter & The Silence of the Lambs are some of the best thrillers ever made, while Hannibal & Red Dragon (although they're not that exceptional) are still perfectly serviceable Hollywood films.

However, Hannibal Rising just didn't do it for me. It tries to give Lecter a tragic backstory, but instead of making him more interesting, it kind of takes away the mystery that made him so compelling in the first place.

The performances are okay: Gaspard Ulliel does what he can with this script, but the whole thing feels unnecessary and kind of dull. It leans too hard into revenge movie territory and not enough into the psychological depth that defines the better entries in the franchise.

There's none of the tension, cleverness, or style that made the previous films work. Honestly, it feels more like a generic origin story than anything else. Definitely the weakest film in the series.

Through the first 30 minutes of my film, I already found myself saying "Surely this will get better." but, as I would quickly learn, I was wrong.

Let's start with the characters. Hardly any of them are given any real background besides Hannibal, and even his seems somewhat disappointing. You will find that this film, rather than adding to the overall character of Hannibal Lecter, it simply takes away from his infamy. In a sense, they tried to set him as a distressed man with an awful past, rather than just a complete psycho.

This film was, more or less, a cheap attempt to milk a slightly good series of films for more than it is actually worth. This become's terribly obvious once you realize there are no great actors to even support this plainly written script. I found myself looking for at least one character that I could find interest in, only to find that background information on every character was simply non-existent.

Not once was I in suspense during this film, and I wonder if my money would have been better spent renting a few cheap horror films and watching them with a few friends rather then seeing this waste of time.

So if you are looking for a movie with a plot that's more dry than Pheonix, has characters who's background are about as intricate as buying a Big Mac at McDonalds, and who's overall effect will leave you wanting to spend the rest of your weekend at your grandmothers, this is the film for you.

I am now glad to say that I have seen every Hannibal movie ever made. I guess "Hannibal" is the name of the franchise. This is easily the worst of all these movies and it's so bad even fans of the series hate it. Well, I guess especially fans. This movie starts off by showing Hannibal's origin with how his parents were killed in a crossfire with Nazis. Seems like every origin story involves Nazis nowadays.

His sister gets eaten and he goes on to avenge his sister by training with this woman where he learns how to swordfight. Yeah, the movie suddenly turns into "Batman Begins", a weird situation for Hannibal Lecter. The villains in this movie are so pathetic and unentertaining. This series was known for having some really cool villains, even Mason Verger from the supbar "Hannibal". This movie is stretched out over two hours as well. For me, it's just a waste of time. *1/2

It's not a film worthy of the legendary film series. Seeing the character's past is nice and a good idea. But the actors really bothered me. Don't think I'm being prejudiced. Of course, when you say Hannibal, Hopkins comes to mind, but Mads Mikkelsen in the series didn't bother me. I wish it could be redone; maybe it could be much better.

All around a average movie. I found it was long and boring all around compared to hannibal and silence of the lambs.would not recommend all I it has going for it is that is a hannibal movie.also the samurai parts i found forced or unnecessary.

I was astonished to see it both in positive and negative sense. The movie tells the story of young Hannibal and how he turned into a monster. Its pretty fine. Gaspard is too good playing young Hannibal as per the script demands. But the script is very disappointing for me. They have turned it into a slasher flick. As far as the character and the theme of the series goes, Hannibal should have been shown more with creepiness rather than his hands filled with blood. It might be great for all the gore lovers but not for me. I was expecting much more. It clearly misguides about the character of Hannibal. They forgot that there was a reason why the character was screened so less without revealing much about his crimes and just giving a nature of his deeds. The mystery of his character was not meant to be solved and not at all in this way. It turns out to be just a gush of blood without the charm. Not for fans of Hannibal. Others can have a look. Its not at all mature like others in series.

Hannibal Rising is, I think, the fourth film of the Hannibal Lecter film series (not counting Manhunter because I assume that was outside the continuity of the movies Anthony Hopkins appeared in). This is the only one of the recent movies without Hopkins, which makes sense as this deals with young Hannibal. A pattern is emerging- the odd-numbered Lecter movies (The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon) are great; the even-numbered movies (Hannibal and this movie) are bad.

Hannibal Rising attempts to explore the origins of Lecter, a Lithuanian boy whose sister was cannibalized during World War II. Lecter grows up to seek revenge, and we see him become a killer and a cannibal.

Inevitably, without Hopkins this movie is going to lose much of the magic and power that Silence and Red Dragon had. Even if they had a younger actor who could do what Hopkins did, there's still an argument to be made that Lecter is scarier as a caged monster and psychological threat than he is as a cliché horror movie killer. Maybe there's an argument to be made that less is more when it comes to seeing Lecter. He's not as big of a character in Silence and Red Dragon than he is here or in Hannibal, but he's more powerful in Silence and Red Dragon. I don't know, but what I do know is that Lecter isn't helped here by either the bland writing or a good guy as compelling as Clarice and Will Graham were. The good guy here, Popil, is not a stand out character at all.

Some of the war scenes in the beginning are dry; the home invaders at the beginning of the film look silly in trying to be scary, and, just as the scene is starting to get scary- they're about to eat the girl- the scene stops. There arguably should have been more here. In contrast, the movie goes a bit too far in depicting a brutal murder by sword, and later, a knife through a head. Unfortunate.

This movie will disappoint Hannibal fans.If you want to see the Hannibal we are familiar with don't bother with watching this thing.And even if you excuse the lack of similarities with the other Hannibal films this movie is still boring and forgettable.

In this film we learn of the beginnings of Dr.Hannibal Lector.The atrocities inflicted on his family during the last days of World War II,especially his sister,just flips little Hannibal out and starts him down his wicked road to total evilness.Somehow he gets into a well-to- do medical school in France and learns the things he needs to learn about the human body to further his career,I guess you'd say.

Which is fine I guess.But the problem is in the film Hannibal's actions don't seem all that wicked or insane considering what happened to his family.If my family ended up like his did I might also seek revenge like he did and I think most folks feel the same way which sort of mutes Hannibals actions to the viewer.While the characters in the film wonder why Hannibal is so insane and such a monster, we as real people in the audience just aren't that horrified because Hannibal doesn't act all that crazy considering what has happened to him.

And the other problem with this film is it doesn't know if it is a straight drama or a horror film so it sort of straddles the line and tries to be both.And it fails at both.Its hard to be a serious drama when you have to utter lines like ,"But he ate my sister!".Also the gore and blood is tame compared to what a straight horror film would have so viewers will be unsatisfied on both levels after watching this film.

It also has a slow plodding pace,a way to stretch out the paper thin plot I suppose.And there is none of the trademark Hannibal stuff we are used to.This closest he comes to the well-known face mask is when he tries on a Samauri mask,looking up into the camera with an attempt to scare I guess.It just looked hokey to me.

This film isn't terrible but it isn't good either.It is just sort of there, trying to feed off other better made movies about Dr.Lector.Not one to add to your horror collection and actually probably not worth a 2 buck rental but a friend let me borrow his copy so I'm okay there.