Hannibal Rising

As my first film of 2007, Hannibal Rising did little to quench the thirst Hannibal the Cannibal. From the very beginning, the film explodes onto the screen with so much idiocity that it seems like it could not even belong to the same family that Anthony Hopkins made famous. The attitude of the film's star, Gaspard Ulliel, is enough to make me want to reconsider my love for the Lecter series.

Set around the upbrininging of Lecter, the film never really finds a rhythym. Likewise, the entire plot of the film is shotty at best. Written by series author Thomas Harris, I expected this film to fit nicely into the Hannibal series. However, the directing and acting were so incredibly bad that this film should have never been made. While there are a few redeeming qualities to the film, namely the cinematography and the performance by The Wire alum Dominic West, the film fails to capture the suspenseful horror that graced the presence of Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and of course the (subpar) Hannibal. C-.