Hannibal Rising (film)

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Hannibal Rising

Directed by	Peter Webber
Produced by	Dino De Laurentiis Martha De Laurentiis Tarak Ben Ammar
Written by	Thomas Harris (novel) Thomas Harris (screenplay)
Starring	Gaspard Ulliel Gong Li Dominic West Rhys Ifans
Music by	Ilan Eshkeri Shigeru Umebayashi
Editing by	Pietro Scalia Valerio Bonelli
Distributed by	The Weinstein Company Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Preceded by	Red Dragon (2002)
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Hannibal Rising (2007) is the fifth film about Dr. Hannibal Lecter. A prequel to Red Dragon, The Silence of the Lambs, and Hannibal, it is an adaptation of Thomas Harris' 2006 novel of the same name and tells the story of how Lecter becomes the infamous serial killer of the previous films and books.

The film is directed by Peter Webber from a screenplay by Harris. It was filmed in Barrandov Studios in Prague. It is 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.

Anthony Hopkins announced that he would not reprise his Academy Award-winning role in this latest addition to the series.

1 Synopsis
2 Cast
3 Other titles
4 References to previous Lecter films
5 Reception
6 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

This prequel shows a young Hannibal Lecter from childhood in Lithuania, to his teen years in France, and up to his arrival in North America.

Lecter is boy of 8 years old at the beginning of the film (1944), living in Lecter Castle in Lithuania. 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 bomber, which sparks a firefight. The bomber is shot down by the tank, but subsequently crashes into it, and the ensuing explosion kills everyone but Lecter and Mischa.

The SS militiamen then loot Lecter Castle. Seeing their wounded SS commander, Grutas shoots him and takes his badge. However, the impending Russian advance force them to hide out in the woods, where they locate the Lecter lodge. They 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 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 his first flashback about Mischa, 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. She manages to get him to speak for the first time, 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 was fishing, Lecter requests an apology from him, and is denied. He disembowels the butcher with a katana, then decapitates him. 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 part to his aunt's intervention, however, Lecter escapes responsibility for the crime.

Eventually, Lecter becomes the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France. He receives a working scholarship at a hospital in Paris, 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. His subsequent flashback reveals that the pot watcher was killed when the Russians bombed the lodge, and the dogtags were still left in the ruins of the lodge.

Lecter then returns to Lithuania in search of 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 dog-tags of the group of deserters who had killed his sister. Dortlich attempts to kill him but is incapacitated by Lecter. After he buries Mischa's remains, Lecter forces Dortlich to reveal the whereabouts of the rest of his gang, and then decapitates Dortlich with a horse-drawn pulley. Dortlich's blood splashes on Lecter's face, and he licks it off. Later, the Soviet police arrive on the scene, only to discover Dortlich's head, its cheeks carved off, and a brochette.

Lecter then visits Kolnas' restaurant in Fontainebleau. He finds Kolnas' young daughter and notices Mischa's bracelet on her. He then gives Kolnas' dogtag to her. Kolnas' enters the restaurant, but Hannibal is persuaded not to murder him, by his Aunt, 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 Popil is entering the lab, Lecter drowns Milko in formaldehyde. 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 helped 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.

During a confrontation with Lady Murasaki, Lecter almost has sex with her, but relents after Lady Murasaki begs him not to get revenge, claiming he had made a promise to Mischa. Lecter then sets up a time bomb in Grutas' home, and attacks him in the shower. 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 tanto. He then hides the tanto 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 rape Murasaki. Lecter takes out the tanto, 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 soldiers, and he was killing them to keep this fact secret. Enraged, Lecter carves his sister's initial, M, into Grutas's chest. Lady Murasaki, finally 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.

[edit] Cast

Actor	Role
Gaspard Ulliel	Hannibal Lecter
Helena Lia Tachovka	Mischa Lecter
Gong Li	Lady Murasaki Shikibu
Rhys Ifans	Vladis Grutas
Kevin McKidd	Petras Kolnas
Richard Brake	Enrikas Dortlich
Stephen Walters	Zigmas Milko
Ivan Marevich	Bronys Grentz
Charles Maquignon	Paul Momund
Dominic West	Inspector Pascal Popil
Beata Ben Ammar	Madam Kolnas
Pavel Bezdek	Dieter
Aaron Thomas	Young Hannibal Lecter

[edit] Other titles

Other working titles for the movie were Hannibal 4, Hannibal IV, The Lecter Variations, The Lecter Variation: The Story of Young Hannibal Lecter, Young Hannibal, and Young Hannibal: Behind the Mask.

[edit] References to previous Lecter films

Out of curiosity, Lecter tries on a decorative samurai mask owned by his adoptive aunt, which bares a striking similarity to his mouth restraint worn in The Silence of The Lambs, Hannibal and Red Dragon.

The cellar he is thrown in at the Soviet orphanage is also quite reminiscent of his cell in The Silence of the Lambs and Red Dragon .

While Lecter injects himself with sodium thiopental, he plays Bach's Goldberg Variations in the background, the same music that plays during his escape in The Silence of The Lambs. The recording heard of the Goldberg variations is the 1955 recording by Glenn Gould. In the other movies featuring Hannibal Lecter, the recording used is the 1981 recording by Glenn Gould of the Goldberg Variations.

A boar - an animal that figured prominently in the plot of Hannibal, catches Lecter off guard when he investigates the grounds of his family's ruined cabin.

In Lecter's medical studies, he experiments on the brain of a cadaver, another plot point in Hannibal, however in that particular instance, the subject was still alive.

[edit] Reception

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Information may change rapidly as the event progresses.

Hannibal Rising was neither a critical or commercial success. It was met with a mostly negative critical response. The film opened at a distant #2 in the United States with $13.4 million, barely one-third of the $33.7 million opening of Norbit [1]. It currently has a rating of 15% "Rotten" on the Tomatometer at Rotten Tomatoes, with a very low 8% Cream of the Crop rating [2]. A positive rating that the film currently has is a "Go" rating at Regal Cinemas [3]. In its second week of release "Hannibal Rising" dropped to #7 at the box office, making only $5.5 million, a 59% 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% drop from the previous week. After three weeks its gross stands at $25,863,475, far less than what "Hannibal" and "Red Dragon" grossed in their opening weekends alone ($58,003,121 and $36,540,945, respectively). It currently has a 5.7/10 on IMDb.