HANNIBAL RISING — * 1/2 — Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans; rated R (violence, gore, profanity, vulgarity, torture, drugs, racial epithets, brief nudity).
Handsome and visually stunning, each of the follow-up movies to "The Silence of the Lambs" has nonetheless steadily regressed into an unappetizing mess.
And "Hannibal Rising" may be the messiest of all.
The film naturally has its share of gruesome moments, but it's also surprisingly dull and uninvolving.
Worse, this is yet another "prequel" that tries to humanize a serial killer, in this case Hannibal Lecter, the cannibalistic killer for which Anthony Hopkins' 1991 characterization won an Oscar.
French actor Gaspard Ulliel plays the youthful Hannibal in this adaptation of Thomas Harris' best-selling novel, which chronicles the events that turned a young Lithuanian war refugee into a remorseless killer with a twisted sense of humor, and of justice.
Hannibal witnesses the killings of his parents and his younger sister (Helena Lia Tachovska), murdered and eaten by starving Nazi sympathizers. After escaping from an orphanage, he makes his way to France, where he's taken in by his uncle's widow, Lady Murasaki Shikibu (Gong Li). She has some skill with a sword, and her lessons may come in handy if he's to take his revenge on his sister's killers.
Harris wrote the screenplay, and his dialogue contains some real howlers. And several performances are laughably awful, as when Ulliel ("A Very Long Engagement") tries too hard to replicate Hopkins' mannerisms.
And goofy-looking Welsh actor Rhys Ifans isn't very menacing or convincing. He's one of several actors cast against their nationalities. The Welsh actor is supposed to be Lithuanian, while Chinese-born Gong is supposed to be Japanese and Englishman Dominic West is supposed to be French).
"Hannibal Rising" is rated R for strong scenes of violence (stabbings, shootings, acts of cannibalism, violence against women and explosive mayhem), some graphic gore, strong sexual language (including profanity and crude slang terms), scenes of torture, drug content (use of hypodermic needles), use of slurs based on race and ethnicity, and brief glimpses of nude artwork and photos. Running time: 118 minutes.
E-mail: jeff@desnews.com