Well I found myself actually kind of enjoying it. In a Grand Guignol kind of way. But I didn’t go into it with very high expectations. Niether the book or the movie approaches Silence of the Lambs (or Red Dragon).
Should I write in SPOILER ALERT? There have been so many.
I’ll say two things: Mason wasn’t nearly as creepy as in the book (no torturing children, nothing much about the eels, no sister) and I think that was a big mistake. He needed to be much more malavolent, and you would think with Gary Oldman, he could have been.
(Mofo Rising, I turned to my SO halfway through and said doesn’t he look just like Arseface.)
On the other hand, the ending was so much better in the movie. It never made any sense that Clarice would run off and live with him (unless he ate part of her brain too). And in the book she’s just delighted to be having brains for dinner. In the movie she’s drugged but you get the feeling of someone trying to wake themselves out of a terrible dream…then falling back into it, because everything that happens in a dream is normal…then once again realizing what’s happening. That’s what’s really great about that scene.
That’s a good point about Raspail. Sheesh.
But in SOTL (maybe it was just in the book?) the point is made (by Hannibal) that while he may have been called Marshall, didn’t he in fact have to go around with a key and turn it in various boxes around town to prove to the real authorities that he was making his rounds? So he wasn’t any real authority at all, as Clarice would like to see him, but essentially a low status night watchman.
SPOILERS!!
I saw Silence of the Lambs when I was nine years old at a birthday party for an old friend of mine. I loved it instantly, being a bit fan of thrillers (yes, even at nine).
I had red the book before seeing the movie, and did the same with Red Dragon, and its movie counterpart, Manhunter.
I could not WAIT for Hannibal to come out, I mean, I bought it the day it was released and had it finished by the next evening.
That said, I was REALLY looking forward to the movie, and you know what? I liked it. I thought it followed the book in enough ways (though I missed Ardelia, Crawford, and Margot) and the added scenes were great. I liked the carousel and I thought the sequence with Pazzi, though a bit long, was well adapted.
I did like Moore in the role of Starling, but I thought her accent was a bit heavy. Or not heavy, so much as off… It didn’t fit well with me.
I thought the camera shots were loverly and the directing was well done. Overall, it was a great movie. BUT, I did NOT like the ending.
I’ve talked to a few of my friends, also huge fans of SOTL and the book form of Hannibal, and they said the same things. I understand that the reason for changing it was that it was a “betrayal of Clarice’s character”, but that’s not the point! The point, as I see it, is that Hannibal is crazy enough, and powerful enough to turn Clarice into what she finds disgusting in him. The book is called “Hannibal” not “Clarice”.
Sure, you can spend millions of dollars and have top-notch talent, but at the end of the day, if all you’ve made is a second-rate horror flick with man-eating pigs and throbbing, exposed brains, just come out and admit it.
Don’t pretend that lingering shots of pretty statues of Florence somehow makes it better. Don’t pretend that a sequel to a Best Picture winner means that you’re making art.
You start with a shitty source, do a few shitty rewrites and then elicit shitty performances from a solid cast. The first two-thirds was as boring as any movie in recent memory, and the remainder was nothing more than B grade schlock.
My favorite scene in the movie was when Hannibal read a line from Dante’s inferno in Italian and then translated it into English for his audience of Italians.
I did enjoy the movie. I read Silence of the Lambs years ago and haven’t read Hannibal. They certainly could have developed Verger’s character more thoroughly. I actually wouldn’t have minded seeing Hannibal’s feed gnawed off by angry boars.
I am also looking forward to the “Ray Liotta’s brains” episode of “The Iron Chef.”
I thought this summed up my thoughts perfectly. But as long as we’re being critical of word choice, let me point out that “witty repartee” is redundant. nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh nyeh
Didn’t care for the book and am not going to see the movie—but is it true, as I read in one review, that Mason Verger looks just like the “Bad Andy” sock puppet in the Dominoes commercials?
I wouldn’t mind seeing HIM tortured to death . . .
For anyone who’s interested, you can now check out my full-length review (see link in sig), to learn in excruciating detail why I disliked Hannibal so intensely.
I thought the movie was awful. I didn’t read the book, so I don’t know how well the movie reflected it, except for what I’ve read here.
Anyway, I wasn’t scared of Hannibal this time. He was a hell of a lot scarier in SOTL, and he was behind bars for most of the first film. To me, Verger’s “face” was more distracting than anything else. It certainly didn’t creep me out. I thought Julianne Moore was excellent as Clarice, which is probably the one thing I can say in favor of the movie. (Then again, that woman could read the phone book out loud and probably keep my attention). Ray Liotta was such a one-dimensional villain that I didn’t care if he had his brains eaten or not. And that Italian cop was hardly a sympathetic character. Again, though, I didn’t give a shit if he died or not. I didn’t find this movie creepy, scary, or intriguing on any level. But there were a couple of gross parts, so I’ll give it credit for that, since that seemed to be a goal of the film.
My husband thought he looked like Fire Marshall Bill, Jim Carrey’s character from In Living Color. Swears he kept waiting for Mason to yell “Let me tell you something…!”
Re: marshall/night watchman, Clarice’s father WAS a night watchman, but she remembered him as a marshall, and didn’t realize the truth until Lecter caught the detail in her story about the clock and made her remember the rest of it.
It’s been a while since I read the book (got it when it first came out), but I don’t recall Lecter cutting off his hand in it - and Verger gets fed to the pigs in the movie? And the sister is gone? How does Lecter get free then???
I’ll probably see it, but I’ll regret it. I really liked the book and it pisses me off that they apparently changed half of it.
And my favorite scene was when Patzi (sp?) called the Reward Hotline number and the voice gave instructions in English,* with an Italian accent.* Bwa ha ha!
This movie sucked ROCKS!
Hannibal is so vile, his voice is so memorable, and he is on the loose. Yet NO ONE recognizes him, even though he doesn’t bother to disguise himself. He lives in a major metropolitan city known for its art, hangs out with academia, attends the opera, is fixated on hangings and the macabre, but the Interpol and U.S. law enforcement CAN’T FIND HIM??? (I guess after they searched the White Pages for ‘Hannibal Lecter’ they gave up.) Yet this same agency has the resources to figure out what handcream Lecter was using when he wrote a note to Clarice?
AAAARRRRRGGGGGHHHH!
And then in the end he is flying in an airplane…the most restricted form of communication in the world. Did anyone in the FBI think to call the airlines and tell them:
“Cannibal the Hannibal is on the loose. He is NOT in disguise. If you do not recognize him from the volumes of news footage the media has devoted to him over the past decade, here’s a clue: HE ONLY HAS ONE FREAKING HAND!”
I read the book, which I thought was interesting but not anywhere near as good as SOTL. I thought the movie was ok. Not great, not horrible, just ok. SOTL is one of my favorites of that genre. Hannibal was certainly nowhere near the caliber of the three movies I saw in the two weeks prior - Quills, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, and Shadow of the Vampire.
