BBM at the movies - Hannibal review

   The other day at the end of my Silence of the Lambs review I said that I thought that Hannibal would be good but not as good as Silence of the Lambs. So, what did I think of
Hannibal? Overall, although a lot of people will disagree with me I thought it was slightly better.
   The film has a number of story lines running parallel to each other throughout. One is Clarice's attempts to redeem herself after being disgraced because of a bungled drugs bust and another is the only surviving Lecter victim, Mason Verger's desire to get revenge on Lecter. We also see Lecter's attempts to come "out of retirement" because he is bored with his present life living in Florence and Francesco Pazzi's attempts to get the reward for leading the FBI to Lecter.
   I've read a lot of reviews now that I have seen the film and most of them have been people
moaning that the plot was muddled and that the writing by Thomas Harris wasn't as good as that of Silence of the Lambs.There were also complaints about the characters, was Clarice as good now that Jodie Foster wasn't in the movie and was Hannibal Lecter as good now that he was in the spotlght and not the mysterious and chilling supporing character as in Silence of the Lambs.
   Overall people have been slagging the new film off but we thought it was great. I thought that Anthony Hopkins was brilliant again and plays the character perfectly and for me he was the best part of the film. Whether Julianne Moore was better or worse than Jodie Foster maybe should be put down to the fact that Foster had a better script to work with but Moore's performance is also good. And the final scenes, in particular what happens to Ray Liotta is something I've not seen anything like before and was a great ending to the film.
   If it was a film on its own everyone would be saying how good it was but unfortunately everyone involved had to make this one live up to its predecesor Silence of the Lambs in order to prevent critisism of it which is inevitably what happened but alas BBM thouroughly enjoyed it.