Hannibal (2001) Cert 18. Director - Ridley Scott. Writer - David Mamet & Steve Zaillian. Starring - Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman & Ray Liotta.

Premise - Ten years since the events from Silence of the Lambs. Lecter has moved to Florence, Starling has been disgraced in the FBI and Lecters only living victim wants to feed him to man eating pigs. After watching Hannibal you are left thinking, 'Why did they bother?'. I have not read Harris' novel, but it got less than favourable reviews. And if the movie has stuck close to the book then I can see why. This movie doesn't go anywhere nor do much and it has no character with which to sympathise or connect with. In effect it's a waste of everyone's time. Lambs director Jonathan Demme and Jodie Foster bailed on the project when they read the script, a good move it would seem. The people that replaced them Julianne Moore and Ridley Scott seemed to have the right credentials to make it work, but somewhere along the line it all went Pete Tong. Moore is good, but given her limited screen time and a weak script she is swimming against the current. Scott on the other hand doesn't get away so lightly. For a man who is just coming of the back of the huge Gladiator it's hard to understand how he could make the glorious streets of Florence look like a back alley in Glasgow. Maybe he should have left them to his SFX teams. so they could create them in a computer like he did for Gladiator. Elsewhere we have Hopkins recreating his Oscar performance, but again the script lets him down. There are no intellectual nuggets like there are in Lambs, just tired dialogue. Liotta is bad, but maybe he just looks worse given the script and the kind of talent he is sharing a screen with. An unaccredited Oldman does the best he can from behind a mountain of latex. Apparently the grisly ending was reworked from the book, but you get the feeling anything would be better than what they came up with here. Hannibal is only recommended to the curious who have either read the book or seen Lambs and want to know what the characters are up to. I still think Manhunter is the ultimate Lecter film anyway.

4/10 for Hannibal. Poster quote - Hannibal the shambles.