Hannibal Rising (film)

Hannibal Rising
Directed by	Peter Webber
Written by	Screenplay: Thomas Harris Novel: Thomas Harris
Produced by	Dino De Laurentiis Martha De Laurentiis Tarak Ben Ammar
Starring	Gaspard Ulliel Gong Li Dominic West Rhys Ifans
Cinematography	Ben Davis
Edited by	Pietro Scalia Valerio Bonelli
Music by	Ilan Eshkeri Shigeru Umebayashi
Distributed by	United States: The Weinstein Company MGM Latin America: Paramount Pictures
Budget	$50,000,000
Box office	$82,169,884

Hannibal Rising is a 2007 thriller film, the fifth film to feature Dr. Hannibal Lecter. It is a prequel to Manhunter/Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal in the Hannibal Lecter series. The film is an adaptation of Thomas Harris' 2006 novel of the same name and tells the story of Lecter's evolution into the infamous serial killer of the previous films and books.

The film was directed by Peter Webber from a screenplay by Harris, and was filmed in Barrandov Studios in Prague. It was produced by the Dino De Laurentiis Company and was released on February 9, 2007. Theatrical distribution in the United States was handled by The Weinstein Company and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The DVD was released on May 29, 2007 in Unrated Widescreen and R-rated Full-Screen editions.

Plot

1944, Lecter is eight years old, living in Lecter Castle; constructed by his paternal ancestor, Hannibal the Grim, in the Lithuanian countryside. Lecter, his younger sister Mischa and his parents escape to the family's hunting lodge in the woods to elude the advancing German troops. Back at Lecter Castle, six Lithuanian militiamen (Grutas, Dortlich, Grentz, Kolnas, Milko, and Pot Watcher) request to join the Waffen-SS. The SS commander orders them to kill the Lecters' Jewish cook who was left behind, to which they gleefully comply.

A Soviet tank stops at the Lecters' lodge looking for water, and forces everyone out of the house. However, the tank is then spotted by a German Stuka bomber, which sparks a firefight. The bomber is shot down by the tank, but subsequently crashes into it and the ensuing explosion kills everyone, except Hannibal and Mischa.

The SS militiamen then loot Lecter Castle. Seeing their wounded SS commander, Grutas shoots him and takes his Iron Cross. However, the impending Russian advance forces them to hide out in the woods where they locate the Lecter lodge. The SS militiamen storm and take over the lodge. Finding no other food in the bitterly cold Baltic winter, the men look menacingly at Hannibal and Mischa.

The movie then cuts to a scene eight years later inside Lecter Castle, which has been turned into a Soviet-run orphanage. A bully harasses Lecter, who has been rendered mute by his experiences, about not singing the orphanage anthem. The bully attacks his head, but Lecter blocks his swing with a fork, impaling the bully's hand. That evening, Lecter experiences a flashback about Mischa screaming in his sleep, which angers the youth commander, who locks him in a dungeon. However, Lecter escapes from the castle orphanage to Paris to live with his widowed aunt, the Lady Murasaki-Lecter. She gets him to speak for the first time since his childhood, and instructs him about flower arrangement, martial arts and ancestor worship.

At a local market, a butcher makes a crude remark about Lady Murasaki. Lecter then attacks him. Later, while the butcher is fishing, Lecter requests an apology from him, and is denied. He then slices the butcher's stomach, arm and back with a katana, then decapitates him. Later that evening, the family cook tells Lecter that the most delicious part of the fish he took from the butcher is the cheeks and helps develop Lecter's signature style of biting his victims cheeks. That same evening, he is suspected of the butcher's murder by Inspector Popil, a French detective who had also lost his family to the war. Thanks in great part to the intervention of his aunt, who places the butcher's disembodied head outside police headquarters while Hannibal is being interrogated inside, Lecter escapes responsibility for the crime.

Eventually, Lecter becomes the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France. He receives a working scholarship, where he is given a job preparing cadavers. One day, Lecter witnesses a condemned war criminal receiving a sodium thiopental injection to force him to recall details about his war crimes. In an attempt to recall the names of those responsible for his sister's death, Lecter injects himself with the solution while listening to Glenn Gould's recording of the Goldberg Variations. The same music is also heard in Silence of the Lambs. His subsequent flashback reveals that Pot Watcher had the dogtags of the other deserters when he was killed as the Russians bombed the lodge. The dogtags should still be in the ruins of the lodge.

Lecter then returns to Lithuania in search of the dogtags, as well as his sister's remains. While crossing the Soviet border, he draws the attention of Dortlich, who is now a Soviet border patrol officer. Lecter excavates the ruins of the lodge where his family died, and also unearths the dogtags of the group of deserters who had killed his sister. Dortlich attempts to kill him, but Lecter gets the upper hand and incapacitates him. After he buries Mischa's remains, Lecter ties Dortlich to a tree and forces him to reveal the whereabouts of the rest of his gang. When he refuses to reveal enough details, Lecter decapitates Dortlich with a horse-drawn pulley. Dortlich's blood splashes on Lecter's face and he wipes it off and licks it. Later, the Soviet police arrive on the scene, only to discover Dortlich's head, with its cheeks carved off, apparently made into a brochette.

Lecter then visits Kolnas' restaurant in Fontainebleau. He finds Kolnas' young daughter, whom he notices is wearing Mischa's bracelet. He then gives Kolnas' dogtag to her. Kolnas enters the restaurant, but Lady Murasaki persuades Lecter not to kill him, for the sake of Kolnas' children. Dortlich's murder, along with Kolnas' dogtag, puts the rest of the group in alert. Grutas, now a sex trafficker, dispatches a second member of the group, Zigmas Milko, to kill Lecter. Milko sneaks into Lecter's laboratory at night with a gun, but Lecter senses his presence and knocks him out with an injection. Just as Police Inspector Popil is entering the lab, Lecter locks Milko in the cadaver tank and leaves him to drown in the embalming fluid. Popil questions Lecter about Dortlich's murder, but is again unable to establish Lecter's guilt. Popil then tries to dissuade him from hunting the gang, and offers to let him go free if he helps locate Grutas. After Lecter leaves, Popil remarks to his assistant that Lecter lost all of his humanity when Mischa died, and has become a monster.

Lady Murasaki begs Lecter not to complete his revenge, but Lecter says that he made a promise to Mischa. Lecter then sets up a time bomb in Grutas' home, and attacks him in the bath. However, a maid alerts Grutas' bodyguards, who then rush in. Just as Grutas' bodyguards are about to slit his throat, Lecter's time bomb goes off and he escapes.

Grutas kidnaps Lady Murasaki and calls Lecter, using her as bait. Lecter recognizes the sounds of Kolnas' ortolans from his restaurant in the background. Lecter goes there and plays on Kolnas' emotions by threatening his children, forcing him to give up the location of Grutas' boat. Lecter then says he will leave Kolnas alone for the sake of his family, and places his gun on the hot stove. As Kolnas goes for the gun, Lecter impales him through the head with his Tantō. He then hides the Tantō behind his back.

Lecter goes to the houseboat. Just as he is about to untie Lady Murasaki, Grutas shoots him in the back. Grutas then proceeds to molest Lady Murasaki. Lecter takes out the Tantō, which was broken by the force of the bullet, and slashes Grutas's Achilles' tendons with it, crippling him. In a final confrontation, Grutas claims that Lecter too had consumed his sister in broth fed to him by the deserters, and he was killing them to keep this fact secret. Enraged, Lecter carves his sister's initial, M, into Grutas's chest. Lady Murasaki, disturbed by his behavior, flees from him even after he tells her that he loves her. As she leaves, Hannibal bites off Grutas's cheeks in what will become his signature attack. The houseboat is then incinerated, but Lecter, assumed to be dead, emerges from the woods. The film then concludes with Lecter hunting down the last member of the group, Grentz, in Canada, thus starting the beginning of Manhunter.

Differences between the book and the film

• In the book, Grutas and his men manage to take over the Lecter lodge after posing as Red Cross workers; in the film, Grutas's gang are Lithuanian militiamen-turned-Waffen-SS members.
• In the book, Lecter's uncle does not die in the war, but travels to the Lithuanian orphanage and brings the boy back to France. He dies of a heart attack after attempting revenge on the butcher upon hearing of the comments he made to Lady Murasaki.
• In the book, Grutas and his gang steal paintings hidden behind a secret door in Lecter castle to start their fortune after the war. There is a small side story of Inspector Popil working with Lecter and Lady Murasaki to discover who is now trying to sell them in France.
• In the book, Lecter kills the butcher Paul Momund with Lady Murasaki's ancestral wakizashi; in the film, he uses the katana from the same matched set of weapons.
• In the book, Lecter gets inside Grutas' house by hiding inside a crate in the back of Milko's truck. He pays a young woman nearby to drop it off, saying that Milko sent her.
• In the book, Lecter is arrested after the explosion on board Grutas' boat. He is set free after public outrage because the victims were white slavers and war criminals.
• In the movie, the characters Jakov, Chiyoh and Gassmann are never shown.

Cast

Actor	Role
Gaspard Ulliel	Hannibal Lecter
Helena Lia Tachovska	Mischa Lecter
Gong Li	Lady Murasaki Shikibu
Rhys Ifans	Vladis Grutas
Kevin McKidd	Petras Kolnas
Richard Brake	Enrikas Dortlich
Stephen Martin Walters	Zigmas Milko
Ivan Marevich	Bronys Grentz
Charles Maquignon	Paul Momund
Dominic West	Inspector Pascal Popil
Beata Ben Ammar	Madam Kolnas
Pavel Bezdek	Dieter
Aaran Thomas	Young Hannibal Lecter
Goran Kostic	Pot Watcher
Robbie Kay	Robert Kay, Kolnas's Son

Reception

Hannibal Rising received a generally negative critical reception, and did not fare as well as the previous three Hannibal films at the box office. It currently has a rating of 15 percent "Rotten" on the Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes, with a very low eight percent Cream of the Crop rating . It also received a Metascore of 35 ("Generally negative reviews") on Metacritic. The film opened at #2 in the United States with $13.4 million, one-third of the $33.7 million opening of Norbit. In its second week of release Hannibal Rising dropped to #7 at the box office, making $5.5 million, a 59 percent drop from the previous week. It dropped out of the top 10 altogether in its third week of release, coming in at #13 and bringing in only $1,706,165, a 68.5 percent drop from the previous week. After a theatrical release of 91 days the final total domestic gross of the film stands at $27,669,725, less than Hannibal and Red Dragon grossed in their opening weekends alone ($58,003,121 and $36,540,945, respectively).

External links

• The Official Dino De Laurentiis Company Website
• The Official Hannibal Rising website
• The Official Hannibal Rising MySpace site
• The Hannibal Lecter Studiolo
• Hannibal Rising at IMDb
• Hannibal Rising at AllMovie
• Hannibal Rising at Rotten Tomatoes
• Hannibal Rising at Metacritic
• Cinefantastique Online Review
• Detailed Comparison between Theatrical Cut and Unrated Cut