Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman, Ray Liotta
Directed by: Ridley Scott

Huh? That's the feeling I had after watching the new, and much anticipated, Ridley Scott film, Hannibal. We all know that it's the continuing story of Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter, a demented psychiatrist who has the unfortunate habit of, um�eating rude and inferior people.

The story has Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) loose in Italy. A local police detective realizes that this man known as Dr. Hill is actually on the FBI 10 Most Wanted list and, since there is quite a reward on his head, he decides to spill the beans and collect a vast sum of cash. The reward is being paid by the only victim of Lecter's to survive, this after slicing off his face with a shard of glass and feeding it to dogs. This man, played under much gross makeup by Gary Oldman, is now obsessed with Lecter and wants to exact his revenge, by feeding the good doctor to psycho, man-eating boars. Sounds silly, huh? Well, it is. Meanwhile, FBI Special Agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) is framed by a crooked agant (Ray Liotta), and is placed on probation. That's about it. A series of events follows and Lecter ends up in the States, meets up with Clarice and the movie ends soon after, but not before a quick meal, some real food for thought (ha-ha).

After hearing all the controversy surrounding this movie, I felt let down. While this movie is pretty gruesome at times, I swear I've seen worse on The X-Files. Fine, there are spilled intestines and stir-fried brains, but I was promised total grossness, and this did not deliver. That's not really what's wrong with this movie. What's wrong is that there is no point. I don't mean a lesson or moral, I simply mean that whatever passes for a story is dreadful. The climax, if it could be called that, is unfulfilling. Also, there are countless "deep" images, that, quite frankly, I didn't get. Maybe I didn't understand them, or they were just fancy, artsy touches signifying nothing. I consider myself an astute moviegoer, and I refuse to believe there is depth to this movie. Could anyone tell me what the *%*$#@!! the injured pigeon represents? Didn't think so. Oh yeah! How does a man on the FBI's 10 Most Wanted list skip from country to country without being detected? Wouldn't someone, anyone, notice him? I mean, c'mon!

There are good things about this movie. The acting is superb. Hopkins can seem like a very nice, old man at times, then creep us out with the simple phrase, "Okey-dokey." Yeesh! That frightened me. There were some nice touches, as when we see a view of Florence, the exact same view Lecter sketched in Silence of the Lambs. Speaking of which, this movie has a completely different tone from that one. SotL was almost a mystery, a race against time to find a killer. Lecter was just this guy behind glass with whom we sympathized because he was kind and courteous. We'd hear the dreadful things he'd done, but generally we would not see it, allowing us to like him. In Hannibal, Lecter is on the loose and kills, eats, disembowels�how are we suppose to like a grotesquely violent psychopath? I know this movie is not meant to be a sequel but rather a continuation of the characters' lives. Regardless, SotL is infinitely better. This movie should never have been made, because it spoils the characters we liked from before. I know SotL itself is a sequel, but the difference here is that it was good, whereas Hannibal is tolerable at best, but not worth the $9.75 I paid.

DroopyMcC
Crazy Eight

MastaCSG		Boring.
Nine

ASY		None of the suspense or flair of SotL.
Nine