Issue date: 2/9/07 Section: Features

Media Credit: Photo courtesy mctcampus.com Ulliel doesn't rise in this film. [Click to enlarge]

Prequels are second only to remakes among the most pervasive trends in Hollywood at the moment. Film studios are turning back the clock on many of their most famous characters and revealing their origins, often in an effort to breathe new life into those movie series that have grown stale. Sometimes this approach brings freshness and vitality to the sagas ("Batman Begins," "Casino Royale"), but other times, it simply seems silly and pointless, if not outright damaging to the original films we loved ("Star Wars Episodes I - III," "Dumb and Dumberer").

Now Dr. Hannibal Lecter is getting in on the act. In "Hannibal Rising," we witness the early days of one of cinema's most famous villains. We are shown precisely how and why Lecter became a killer. We see his entry into medical school.

Ever wanted to know why he has a taste for human flesh?

"Rising" supplies the answer.

But do audiences really want to know how Hannibal Lecter became Hannibal the Cannibal? In "The Silence of the Lambs," the film which gave us our first look at Lecter (that is, the Anthony Hopkins version of the character -- Brian Cox had previously portrayed him in 1986's "Manhunter") we were not given any back-story on this twisted creature. No hints were offered as to where he came from or how he became the way he was. For all we knew, Lecter was simply born "bad." Sometimes evil just happens, without any logical explanation behind it.

Yet "Rising" is intent on completely demystifying the character, robbing him of the enigma that had served him so well. It shows that Lecter's nature was a product of terribly tragic circumstances fate thrust upon him. Lecter was made a monster, not born one.

The film opens in Lithuania in 1944 during World War II, where a preteen Lecter is forced to watch helplessly as his parents are killed in the crossfire between the Nazis and the Russian Army. Retreating into the safety of their family home, Lecter attempts to protect his younger sister, Mischa, but fails to when the house is seized by a vile group of Nazi sympathizers. Unable to scrape together any food, the brutes decide to make a meal of poor Mischa.

Eight years later, Lecter is a haunted, mute teenager, tormented by nightmares of his sister. He sets out to find his uncle, the only family he has left, but instead finds his uncle's widow, a beautiful Japanese woman, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li), with whom Lecter enters a romantic relationship. When a butcher makes a crude remark about Murasaki, Lecter claims the man's head. After that, he gains a taste for murder and seeks to hunt down those who devoured his sister.

Those who actually did wish to see Lecter's origins will probably be disappointed to learn that "Rising" is nothing more than a standard revenge story, with Lecter, one-by-one, hunting down, eliminating and feasting upon those who wronged him. The film, perversely, asks us to root for Lecter as the wounded, avenging angel who only seeks justice. Though audiences embraced the character in the previous films, there was always the sense that Lecter was, at best, an antihero. The audience liked him, but never forgot what he was. "Rising," however, makes Lecter into a cannibalistic Batman of sorts. He even undergoes martial arts training. The film sees him as a hero in a way its predecessors never quite did.

There isn't much to recommend about the film. It is languidly paced and atrociously written, with dialogue that is frequently laughable ("Memory is a knife...it can hurt you"). A chief flaw is the casting of French actor Gaspard Ulliel as Lecter. With his long jaw and unsettling gaze, Ulliel certainly looks creepy. However, he looks absolutely nothing like Anthony Hopkins. He attempts to replicate Hopkins' distinctive Lecter voice, but instead comes up with a bizarre European mish-mash of an accent. His performance also largely lacks the wry sense of humor that Hopkins brought to the character.

The film also makes several clumsy attempts to allude to the earlier films. When visiting the ruins of his old home, Lecter is charged by a large boar, just like those that he was to be eaten by in "Hannibal." Most absurdly, however, is the scene in which he wears a samurai mask that looks exactly like the protective mask he famously wore in "Lambs."

"Rising" is nothing more than a cash-grab, a desperate attempt to squeeze more money out of a popular character. Its main character is named Hannibal Lecter, but does not otherwise call to mind the glorious fiend Hopkins made famous. This is a film that will eat two hours of your life with fava beans and a nice Chianti.

Brandon Wolfe can be reached at features@statehornet.com.

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