In the past fifteen years no fictional serial killer has captured the imagination quite like Thomas Harris' Hannibal Lecter. As portrayed by Anthony Hopkins in 1991's Oscar winning, The Silence Of The Lambs, Lecter was a cunning and highly intelligent killer (with a touch of cannibalism thrown in) who liked to play mind games with people. Hopkins reprised his role for the disappointing Hannibal and decent Red Dragon, but for this fourth entry they've decided on a prequel giving us a chance to see how Lecter came to be the way he is.

It's 1944 and Hannibal and his family are forced to flee from their castle dwelling when there's a threat of an attack by the Nazis. They make their way to a small, remote cabin and both of his parents end-up being killed in the middle of a minor battle between a Russian tank and German airplane. This leaves Hannibal and his young sister alone in the middle of a war.

They're not alone very long, though, as a group of soldiers stumble across the hut and decide to take shelter in it. They end-up taking our youngsters hostage and, when hunger gets the best of them, do something unforgivable to Hannibal's sister.

Flash forward to eight years later as Hannibal's former home has been converted into the very orphanage he's residing in. Now a young, independent man (as played by Gaspard Ulliel), Hannibal leaves his temporary abode and heads to France in order to stay with his uncle's widow, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li). While there he learns the way of the samurai, enters medical school, and is plagued by visions of what happened to his sister - visions we're shown in effectively staged flashbacks that hint at the atrocity that occurred without being exploitive.

From there Harris' script follows Hannibal, who's portrayed as something of an anti-hero, as he sets in motion his plans to get vengeance on the soldiers responsible. He tracks them down, tortures them, and proceeds to kill them. All the while, police inspector Popil (Dominic West) is trying to catch him at his game.

While Hannibal Rising is a generally watchable effort that looks stellar thanks to some top-notch production design by Allan Starski and solid direction by Peter Webber, it still seems to be missing something to give it some extra "oomph". Whereas previous entries in the series had a strong opposing foil to Lecter's evil (Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling in The Silence Of The Lambs and Ed Norton's Will Graham in Red Dragon), there just seems to be that dynamic missing from this movie. West tries his best as Popil, but his character never poses any sort of threat to Hannibal's murderous spree.

As for Hannibal himself, as acted by Ulliel, the character is constantly smirking and talking with a cool demeanor, but Harris' script makes him into merely a pretty common vengeful person rather than the cunning genius we've come to expect. Hannibal Rising just feels more like the Death Wish of horror films ("you killed my sister, you must die."), rather than offering the psychological thrills of previous films.

During my viewing of Hannibal Rising, I had a hard time getting into the storyline and the characters. Harris does establish an alright back story to Lecter, but during the entire two-hour-plus running time it just felt like something was missing from the mix. Like I said before, the film certainly looks good, and there's some fairly decent death scenes on hand, but the movie never really gets going and this shift to try and build sympathy for and make Hannibal into the "hero" of the story just doesn't sit well.

Review based on unrated version, the theatrical cut is also available on DVD (but only in Full Frame). (Chris Hartley, 6/1/07)

Directed By: Peter Webber.
Written By: Thomas Harris.

Starring: Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans, Dominic West.

Picture Ratio: 2.35:1 Widescreen.

Picture Quality: There's no flaws in the print here and it deals with the film's muted colour pallette well. It looks as good as you'd expect from a movie that was in theatres less than four months ago.

Extras: There's a decent batch of extras here as we get the theatrical and teaser trailers, five deleted scenes with optional commentary by director Webber that add nothing much to the finished product, a brief featurette on Starski's production design, a "Hannibal Lecter: The Origin Of Evil" making of featurette with interviews and behind-the-scenes footage, and a listenable commentary track with Webber and producer Martha De Laurentiis.