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Hannibal Rising (film)

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Hannibal Rising
Theatrical release poster
Directed byPeter Webber
Screenplay byThomas Harris
Produced byDino De Laurentiis
Martha De Laurentiis
Tarak Ben Ammar
StarringGaspard Ulliel
Gong Li
Rhys Ifans
Dominic West
CinematographyBen Davis
Edited byPietro Scalia
Valerio Bonelli
Music byIlan Eshkeri
Shigeru Umebayashi
Production
company
Distributed byMomentum Pictures (UK)
SPI International (Czech Republic)
The Weinstein Company
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (US)
Release dates
  • 7 February 2007 (2007-02-07) (France)
  • 9 February 2007 (2007-02-09) (Italy/US/UK)
  • 22 February 2007 (2007-02-22) (Czech Republic)
Running time
121 minutes[2]
130 minutes (Extended cut)
Countries
  • France
  • United Kingdom
  • United States[1]
LanguagesEnglish
French
German
Russian
Budget$50 million[3]
Box office$82,169,884[4]

Hannibal Rising is a 2007 horror film and the fifth film of the Hannibal Lecter franchise. It is a prequel to the previous three films: Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal. 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 cannibal/serial killer of the previous films and books.

French actor Gaspard Ulliel portrays Lecter. Anthony Hopkins played the role in three previous films, and Brian Cox portrayed him in Manhunter (1986).

Hannibal Rising 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 9 February 2007. Theatrical distribution in the United States was handled by The Weinstein Company and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. The DVD was released on 29 May 2007.

Plot

In 1944, soon after the Soviet Red Army had taken Lithuania from Germany, the Nazis launch a counter-assault. Eight-year-old Hannibal Lecter, his younger sister, Mischa, and their parents quickly escape to the family's hunting lodge. After the Nazis take over Lecter Castle, six Lithuanian militiamen, who want to join the Waffen-SS, are told to prove their worth. Their leader, Vladis Grutas, orders them to kill the Lecters' Jewish cook. They also threaten another servant of the Lecter household, asking him if he was a Gypsy or a Jew. As this happens, the Soviet Red Army begins launching attacks to retake the area.

A Soviet tank crew stops at the Lecters' lodge, telling the Lecters to stand away from the house while they get some water. The Soviet soldiers allow Hannibal and Mischa to stay within the lodge, where it is warmer. The Soviet 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 who was outside. The Lithuanian Nazi militiamen then loot Lecter Castle as the Soviet Red Army draws nearer. The advancing Soviet army forces the Nazi militiamen to hide out in the woods, where they happen upon the Lecter lodge. Finding no other food in the bitterly cold Baltic winter, they murder and cannibalize Mischa in front of Hannibal, who escapes and is found half-dead by Soviet soldiers.

Eight years later, Lecter once again lives in Lecter Castle, which has been turned into a Soviet-run orphanage. His co-residents are under the impression that he has been rendered mute by his childhood trauma. After exacting his revenge on a bully at the orphanage and retrieving letters from his uncle, Lecter escapes the castle orphanage, gets through border controls and goes to live in Paris with his aunt, Lady Murasaki. She manages to get him to speak and begins teaching him the arts of flower arrangement, martial arts, and ancestor worship.

At a local market, a butcher and former Vichy collaborator, makes racist remarks about Lady Murasaki and sexually harasses her, causing Lecter to fly into a rage and attempt to beat the man to death. The butcher later goes fishing and is disrespectful when Lecter turns up to request an apology. Lecter slices the butcher's stomach, arm and back with a samurai sword (katana), and then decapitates him. That same evening, he is questioned about the butcher's murder by Inspector Popil, a French detective who also lost his entire family during the war. While her protégé is being interrogated, Lady Murasaki places the butcher's head outside the headquarters with a swastika carved into his forehead, thus absolving Lecter of suspicion; but Popil is not convinced that Lecter is innocent.

Lecter soon 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 repressed memories about his crimes. In an attempt to recall the names of those responsible for his sister's murder, Lecter injects himself with the solution while listening to Glenn Gould's recording of the Goldberg Variations. His subsequent recollection reveals that Pot Watcher had the dog tags of the other men who killed Mischa, and was subsequently killed as the advancing Soviet forces bombed a part of the lodge, which collapsed on top of him. Lecter reasons that the dog tags should still be in the ruins of the lodge.

Lecter returns to Lithuania in search of the dog tags, as well as his sister's remains. Because he crosses the Soviet border, a list containing his name draws the attention of the ex-nazi Dortlich, who is now a Soviet border patrol officer. Lecter excavates the ruins of the lodge and unearths the dog tags of the deserters who murdered Mischa. Dortlich tries to kill him, but Lecter gets the upper hand and incapacitates him. After he buries Mischa's remains, Lecter tortures Dortlich into revealing the whereabouts of his accomplices. He then decapitates Dortlich with an elaborate horse-drawn pulley lubricated with mayonnaise. Having killed the first of the men responsible for slaughtering and eating his sister, Lecter returns the favor in kind by cannibalizing Dortlich, making a brochette with his cheeks and wild mushrooms.

One of the pieces of information that Lecter had managed to extract from Dortlich was the location of one of the other men, Kolnas. At a restaurant in Fontainebleau, Lecter encounters Kolnas's young daughter, who, he notices, is wearing a bracelet that Kolnas had stolen from Mischa. Hannibal then distracts her while he slips Kolnas' dog tag into her pocket, which Kolnas subsequently discovers. Lady Murasaki tries to persuade Lecter to spare him, for the sake of his children.

Dortlich's murder, along with Kolnas' discovery of his own dog tag, puts the rest of the group on 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, anticipating an assassination attempt, tricks him with the aid of a cadaver and knocks him out with an injection. Lecter locks Milko in the cadaver tank and leaves him to drown in the embalming fluid just as inspector Popil enters the laboratory.

Popil questions Lecter about Dortlich's murder, but is again unable to prove Lecter's guilt. Popil, dropping all pretences, then tries to dissuade him from killing the rest of the gang and offers to grant him immunity if he helps the police to locate Grutas, who is still a wanted war criminal. After Lecter relays all of the details of his past to the police, Popil remarks to his assistant that Lecter lost all of his humanity when Mischa died, and that when they do arrest Grutas, that he will have Lecter locked up in an asylum as well. That night, Lady Murasaki reveals her romantic feelings to Lecter and begs him to stop, but Lecter says that he made a promise to Mischa. He plants a time bomb in Grutas' home and attacks him in the bath. A maid alerts Grutas' bodyguards, but just as they are about to kill him, Lecter's bomb goes off and he manages to escape.

Grutas kidnaps Lady Murasaki to use her as bait. Lecter recognizes the sounds of Kolnas's ortolans from his restaurant in the background. Lecter goes to the restaurant and manipulates Kolnas into believing that he, Lecter, had kidnapped his children and had already injured them, forcing Kolnas to give up the location of Grutas' boat. Lecter then calls Kolnas' home and hands over the phone to him. Panicked, he shouts at his wife to check on the children, to which she complies and returns to tell him that the children are safe in their beds. Lecter then lays his gun down on the stove between him and Kolnas, saying that he will leave Kolnas alive for the sake of his family. Realizing that he had been duped, Kolnas angrily goes for the gun anyway, but Lecter is ready for this and impales him through the head with his tantō.

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 in front of Lecter, who then takes out the tanto from his back-sheath, which had shattered when blocking the bullet, and slashes Grutas's Achilles tendons with it, crippling him. Hearing Hannibal say he must kill them because they ate his sister, Grutas taunts Lecter with the fact that he too had consumed her in a broth fed to him by the deserters, and that he was killing them to keep this fact secret. A livid Lecter then carves his sister's initial, M, into Grutas's chest.

Lady Murasaki flees in horror. Lecter tries to tell her that he loves her, but she replies that there is nothing left in him to love. Hannibal then proceeds to eat Grutas alive, starting with his cheeks. The houseboat is then incinerated, but Lecter, assumed by Popil to be killed in the blast, is seen by Lady Murasaki emerging from the water on a nearby wooded shore. Lecter is then shown to be hunting down the last member of the group, Grentz, in Canada. Stopping in at a general store run by Grentz, Lecter states he stopped by to "collect a head". He then drops Grentz' dog tag on the counter, which he then picks up and looks up at Lecter in horrified realization. The final shot is of Lecter driving away with a children's song (a favorite of Mischa's) being sung in the background.

Cast

Reception

Critical response

Hannibal Rising received a generally positive critical reception, but did not fare as well as the previous films in the series at the box office. Rotten Tomatoes gives the film a score of 100% based on reviews from 143 critics.[5] At Metacritic it received a score of 95% based on reviews from 30 critics, indicating "positive reviews".[6]

Box office

The film opened at #2 in the United States with $13.4 million, less than half of the $33.7 million opening of Norbit[7] which was released during the same week as Hannibal Rising. In its second week of release, Hannibal Rising dropped to #7 at the U.S. box office, making $5.5 million, a 59% drop from the previous week. It dropped out of the top 10 U.S. grossing films in its third week of release at #13 with $1,706,165 in revenue, a 69% drop from the previous week. After a theatrical release of 91 days, the final total North American domestic gross of the film was $27,669,725, less than the opening weekend gross of both Hannibal and Red Dragon ($58,003,121 and $36,540,945, respectively).

Home media

The DVD was released on 29 May 2007 and sold 480,861 units in the opening weekend, generating revenue of $10,574,133. As of August 2009, the film has grossed $23,242,853 from DVD sales alone. Blu-ray sales or DVD rentals are not included.[8]

References

  1. ^ Harvey, Dennis (8 February 2007). "Hannibal Rising". Variety. Retrieved 8 December 2013.
  2. ^ "HANNIBAL RISING (18)". British Board of Film Classification. 15 January 2007. Retrieved 10 September 2013.
  3. ^ Hannibal Rising, The Numbers
  4. ^ Hannibal Rising, Box Office Mojo
  5. ^ Hannibal Rising at Rotten Tomatoes Flixster
  6. ^ Hannibal Rising at Metacritic CBS Interactive
  7. ^ Gwyneth Paltrow finds "Country Strong" a struggle (Reuters), 21 December 2010 Yahoo! Movies: Movie News
  8. ^ Hannibal Rising – DVD Sales. The Numbers. Retrieved on 2010-12-22.
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