DVD Release Date:  May 29, 2007
Theatrical Release Date:  February 9, 2007
Rating:  R (for strong, grisly, violent content and some language/sexual references)
Genre:  Horror
Running Time:  117 min.
Director:  Peter Webber
Actors:  Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans, Dominic West, Helena Lia Tachovska, Kevin McKidd, Aaron Thomas, Richard Brake, Goran Kostic

Moviegoers first encountered serial killer Hannibal Lecter in director Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986), in which the cannibalistic villain was played by excellent character actor Brian Cox. But the most memorable incarnation of Hannibal – Anthony Hopkins’ interpretation in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs – turned the character into a cultural icon. Hopkins won an Oscar for his portrayal only a year after Jeremy Irons, Kathy Bates and Joe Pesci had scored an Oscar trifecta, taking home the statuettes for their portrayals of murderous individuals in Reversal of Fortune, Misery and Goodfellas, respectively. The mainstreaming of psychotic villains had begun.

The public’s fascination with Lecter carried through to an odious Silence of the Lambs sequel, Hannibal, and “Lambs” prequel Red Dragon (a remake of Manhunter), both starring Hopkins as Lecter. Now comes Hannibal Rising, a look at the early years of Lecter and the experiences that created the monstrous individual.

If “Hannibal Rising” isn’t bad enough to kill off this franchise, nothing will do the trick. Ghastly and often disgusting, the film somehow manages also to be dull, all the while providing a strange but not entirely convincing impetus for Lecter’s taste for human flesh.

This time the killer is played, for most of the film’s running time, by Gaspard Ulliel. But Hannibal Rising starts with the younger Aaron Thomas as Lecter, hiding with his sister, Mischa, on the Eastern Front—Lithuania, specifically—during World War II. A band of Nazi sympathizers, desperate and hungry, takes shelter in the same dwelling as the young Lecters, whereupon they kill Mischa, cook her and eat her. Young Hannibal, spared the same fate, vows to track down her killers.

We watch as Hannibal ages into a young man who fearlessly confronts his adversaries. First up are the bullies at the orphanage where Lecter lives. “You do not honor the human pecking order,” the head of the orphanage tells Lecter, in the film’s one genuinely funny line. “You’re always hurting the bullies.”