Hannibal
(2001)
"He never kill good guy" - Dino
DeLaurentiis, producer of "Hannibal" on the film's
main character. from February 2001 issue of "In Focus"
magazine.
Note: Spoilers - including spoilers that will make
your lunch come up!
In the midst of "Hannibal," Anthony Hopkins' titular
cannibalistic serial killer enters the house of Ray
Liotta's FBI Agent Krendler whilst he is away and looks
around. He finds an some envelopes addressed to the
agent on a bureau. One of these is from Verizon and
the oh-so recognizable logo on the envelope blazes across
the gigantic silver screen. It is one of the most obvious
yet subtle product placements ever to be seen in a blockbuster
film. "Hannibal" is like that, obvious yet subtle. It's
opulence often recalls some of the most beautiful and
austere films that showcase European history and American
wealth from the past. Yet, in many instances the film
is the most grotesque, repugnant, vile, bloody, gory,
sickening, disgusting, degrading, nauseating, puerile
trash ever to be shown in a supposed "intellectual"
film. It's a cheap gore flick masquerading as art. It's
like a $3 whore with cum running down her leg trying
to pretend she's Julia Roberts in "Pretty Woman." I
ain't buying it.
Truly "Hannibal" is worthless trash. I am not a religious
person, but if there is a hell, surely everyone involved,
from novelist Thomas Harris down to the most piddling
extra, will burn in eternal hell for unleashing this
garbage on the world. I am not one to side with "moralists"
and middle class do-gooders who whine about the amount
of graphic violence in films and entertainment these
days, but "Hannibal" has me considering enlisting in
their cause. It is surely a should- be-NC-17 film that
no self-respecting person should have to endure. It
is vomitous rubbish that only the most sick-minded and
juvenile person could get pleasure from viewing. It
is the kind of thing that makes a film like "Cannibal
Ferox" seem acceptable.
At least in B-grade cannibal and gore films, there
is a sense of fun, a sense of camp. Here director Ridley
Scott and everyone else involved seems to take everything
so seriously, that there can be no sense of fun. The
damn film has large boars, you know, wild pig-type creatures,
actually feasting on human flesh. It is repugnant. There
is a disemboweled hanging victim and actual feasting
on human brains. The last shot in the film has Hopkins,
as the winking supposedly kinky killer, feeding a piece
of human brain to a young Asian boy. Puke! If you can
watch this kind of disgusting goop and consider it entertainment
(and we are not talking B-grade camp here), then I don't
want you on my website. Take your filthy little pointer
and go click on Ain't-it-vomit-news or something. If
you're the kind of person who could enjoy this cinematic
feces, then leave immediately. Go lock yourself in your
room and look at pictures on alt.binaries.erotic.snuff
and leave us decent folk alone. Sick pathetic, juvenile,
sick fucks. Burn in hell!
Scott doesn't offer us anything new here except this:
He seems to delight in offering us the human faces as
a featureless, soulless nothing. This is none more obvious
than in the facade of Mason Verger, a former victim
of Hannibal Lecter, a rich homosexual who did poppers
with the good doctor and then cut his own face off for
orgiastic pleasure. "Seemed like a good idea at the
time" says the hollow shell of a face. Looking like
a burn victim cross-pollinated with "The Elephant Man,"
Verger is portrayed by an uncredited Gary Oldman who
fulfills his thespianistic orgasmic wont by yet again
getting to appear in tons of make-up and "act." I remember
when Oldman used to be able to create awesome and unique
characters with nary a hint of prosthetics. Those were
the days. Anyway, Oldman's foam rubber facade is disturbingly
ugly and reprehensible but it serves to remind us of
Hannibal's predilection for eating his victim's faces
and also reminds us, oh so subtly and so obviously,
that the face is the facade of a person. Hannibal, as
played by Hopkins, and Clarice Starling, as played by
Julianne Moore (whose Jodie Foster imitation will nag
you throughout the entire film), all begin to seem as
featureless as Oldman's Verger as the film unspools.
Everyone loses their soul.
"Hannibal" is the height of pretension. Scott's supple
opulence and refined visual design is nothing more than
a Herschell Gordon Lewis gore-fest tarted up as a "art"
film. It's one of those films for those pretentious
supposed intellectuals who rebuff Stephen King as "so
middle class." These are the kind of stupid fucks who
masturbate while reading Jackie Collins novels on the
toilet with the door locked.
If you find any redeeming quality in "Hannibal," you
are a sick fuck. If you somehow have children in your
charge and allow them to watch it, you should have Child
Protective Services called on you. Anyone who can stomach
this vile and pointless film should be exiled to the
moon.
If you insist on watching the film, please eat lots
of buttery popcorn and hot dogs and nachos and candy.
Have some cheesecake before you go to the theater. Eat
some lobster prior to arriving at the cinema. I hope
you ruin your good shirt puking all over yourself at
the cinematic sewage purporting to be a blockbuster
film for the masses.
Note:
Also with Giancarlo Giannini, Frankie Faison, Zeljko
Ivanek, and Spike Jonze.
Screenplay credited to David Mamet and Steve Zaillian,
who should be very ashamed.
Produced by Dino DeLaurentiis and Martha DeLaurentiis.
(This should have been a sure sign).
Score by Hans Zimmer.
Two other films have included the character of Hannibal
Lecter, "Silence of the Lambs," (1991) of which this
is considered a sequel, (directed by Jonathan Demme)
and "Manhunter" (1986) directed by Michael Mann and
with Brian Cox as the good doctor.
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Report
Card
Script/Routine:
F
Music: C
Cinematography\Lighting: A+
Sound: A+
Performance:
A
Final
Grade: F
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