Hannibal
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- Release Date: February 9, 2001
- Directed by: Ridley Scott
- Written by: David Mamet and Steven Zaillian
- Runtime: 2 hours 11 minutes
- Series: Hannibal Lecter
Following up a film as critically acclaimed as The Silence of the Lambs would be a difficult task for anybody. The movie set such a high bar in terms of characters, themes and scares that almost any attempt to make a sequel was sure to be doomed from the beginning. Audiences had to wait ten years to finally see what happened after Silence's open ending, and the payoff disappointed so many people. I don't watch this movie too often, and every time I do, I'm reminded of why that is. Simply put: this movie is just a mess, even though it has the occasional entertaining spot as well.
Hannibal completely drops the ball when it comes to tension and characters. The Silence of the Lambs and Manhunter were both tight psychological thrillers that put a lot of focus on their protagonists' frame of mind as they struggled to keep themselves grounded during their hunt for their respective killers. Their scope was limited to what their main characters were investigating at the time, and this allowed the audience to really get invested in them and their struggles. This movie throws that sense of focus by the wayside in favor of a globetrotting conspiracy story the features about four different plotlines running at once: Clarice Starling's continued work with the FBI, Hannibal on the loose, a cop in Italy who discovers Hannibal, and a surviving victim of Hannibal who hopes to capture and kill him. There's just too much going on in this story, and because it bounces from protagonist to protagonist so often, it makes it very hard to care about any particular character at all. Every time I watch this movie, I find myself checking out during the plotlines that don't focus on Clarice and Hannibal, and I keep waiting around for them to finally show back up. By the time the movie finally decides to focus specifically on their story, it's almost an hour and a half into the thing and I just don't care anymore. The idea of Hannibal running loose in the world could have worked really well if they had kept the focus on him or the main person tracking him down. As is though, the story has way too much fat on it, and it feels unlike any of the previous installments before it.
Another thing that makes Hannibal stand out from its predecessors is its increased amount of violence and gore. Many horror sequels are known for that trait, but this case is more frustrating to me. The previous films had their gory moments, but they were mainly limited to a few shock scenes that paid off after long periods of building tension. This movie just throws violence in wherever it thinks it'll work - whether it's Hannibal disemboweling and hanging someone, cooking and eating a brain, or another character being devoured by wild hogs. I love a gory horror film, but this series is known for utilizing psychological horror instead of in-your-face violence. It feels so cheap and out of place, and I think the scattershot story only makes that feeling worse. Instead of taking its time to build up to a gory setpiece, they're shown in the midst of whatever short plot thread is going on at the moment. Hannibal as a character is reduced from being a calculating and psychologically complex villain to a standard horror film killer, and that's probably the biggest disappointment of the entire thing.
All of those negatives aside, there are a few positives to be had. Gary Oldman plays Mason Verger, one of Hannibal's victims who ended up surviving his attack. This character has always been the most memorable part of the movie to me just because of how messed-up he is. He's a foul-mouthed sadistic pedophile who cut his own face off with broken glass and has used his massive wealth to orchestrate a complex scheme for revenge. He's almost cartoonishly evil compared to the villains that came before, and Oldman's performance really adds a lot to this. His voice always has this cold sassiness to it, and this adds a lot of humor to some of the lines he's given. I also genuinely enjoy the last act of the movie, when the plot threads finally converge around Clarice, Hannibal and Mason. After an hour and half of sloppy storytelling, the last half hour finally allows these characters to interact properly with each other and deliver some payoff. You get a great sequence of Clarice and Hannibal tracking each other down, Mason's attempt to feed Hannibal to some hogs, and Hannibal eating a man's brain while he's still alive. Are these scenes completely stupid and at odds with the tone of the previous films? Yes. Are they entertaining and fun to watch? Also yes. If I have to watch a disappointing sequel to a classic film, I should be able to have a little fun with it, and the last 30 minutes definitely deliver on that front.
Hannibal is a clusterfuck of a sequel, and really only worth watching if you want to unplug your brain and watch some mindless horror. While it has its moments, almost every creative decision feels completely at odds with what this series had been up until this point. It always amazes me that Ridley Scott directed this, as everything onscreen just feels like sloppy fanfiction featuring beloved characters It's a letdown of a conclusion, but if you set the bar really low and are only interested in seeing Hannibal kill a few people, then you may have a good time with it.