Film Review - Hannibal

Any review of this film is going to contain an apology. It's not Silence of the Lambs. There's no way it can deliver the same impact. The audience already knows who Dr Lecter is and what he does. The only way it can really go is in the direction of more. More cultured urbanity, more unconcern for the fate of the uncivil. And this it does. There are three main set pieces involving the good doctor and all three are pretty, going on very, disturbed. But it remains unclear whether this is enough for a jaded twenty-first century public.

The sense of apology continues when comparing the film with the book. One has to admit that there is no way the film could have gone along with the book's ending and still been shown. Starling must keep her virtue, in every sense, otherwise the only hero is Lecter and after all, he eats people. But there is a lingering feeling that Hannibal somehow needs the book's moral débacle in order to have an impact worthy of its predecessor. As it stands, it does raise the stakes. But neither enough overall, nor in sufficiently novel ways does it do so.

This is not really anybody's fault, as far as I can tell. The big names put in spirited enough performances. Hopkins is believably unpredictable. Julianne Moore seems, most of the time, like a human being rather than a Hollywood leading lady,which is nice. The difficult decisions about what to include and omit from a long and, to be blunt, oddly-written book seem, once you've had a couple of hours at home to think about it, to have been sensible and thoughtfully achieved. But this is a big budget horror comedy thriller. Sense and thoughtfulness should both have been imaginatively slaughtered in the first act, leaving the viewer genuinely nervous about what follows.

Hannibal does, I suppose, raise issues about entertainment and censorship and it may make people wonder about why they seek and enjoy such nastiness. The excuse of intelligence, which allows substantial audience sympathy for Dr Lecter, holds no water when examined. We cannot kill and eat all the crass and brutish people in the world, however tempting the idea. The excuse of audience intelligence, which says that we are bright enough to urge him on in a fictional context while remaining unaltered in our own attitudes, has hardly been tested.

But all this analysis misses the point, which is this: I'm easily scared. I sat in the middle of the front row,with no place to hide, and only jumped once. Maybe if I hadn't read the book first it might have been three or four times. But ultimately shocks aren't surprising when you expect them. Something different was needed. It is hard to imagine where it could have come from.

Ian Threadgill 18/2/01