‘Hannibal’ more slasher flick than thriller

Friday, Feb. 9, 2001 | 10:07 a.m.

Max Jacobson covers the food industry and writes reviews movies for the Sun. Reach him at max@vegas.com or 990-2454.

A memorandum came with the press kit for "Hannibal," the new film based on the novel of the same name by Thomas Harris. It alludes to the fact that MGM, the studio distributing this film, does not knowingly target persons under age 17 in the marketing of R-rated films.

It also mentions the film's strong, gruesome violence. No kidding.

Many of us waited nearly 10 years for the sequel to "The Silence of the Lambs," and we may be a bit letdown by this new effort. Our appetite for gore, though, rates to be sated for another decade or more. "Hannibal" contains what is perhaps the single goriest scene in the history of cinema.

It's been a long time since Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) disappeared from view, and he is, as he breathily announces in the film, "ready to return to public life."

When the film opens Special Agent Clarice Starling (Julianne Moore) becomes involved in a bloody shootout. She is no longer a trainee, but a seasoned veteran, and we see that she feels the consequences of her actions deeply. As she cries alone in her apartment in the shooting's aftermath, she is a torn, conflicted figure.

What she needs, it is apparent, is Dr. Lecter, and as we soon learn, the feeling is mutual. Although the actors are virtually never together until the final sequences of the film, the psychological bonds of the two characters are the only plot points that really sustain our interest. While much of the suspense generated by Lecter's last appearance was genuine, here we can predict the outcome of many scenes in advance.

The body of the film is centered in Florence, Italy, where Lecter is masquerading as a curator. Meanwhile a Columbo-like inspector named Rinaldo Pazzi (the scene stealing Giancarlo Giannini, wearing the perpetual hangdog look of someone who knows he is about to meet an unimaginably grim fate) trails him unremittingly. The trouble is, the audience knows Pazzi's fate as well. (The scenes these two actors play together are suspenseful, but only because we are never sure when the shoe is going to drop.)

The complex plot revolves around Lecter's only surviving victim, a hideously disfigured, reclusive millionaire (played by a well-known actor contractually billed only in the film's end credits) a group of thugs from Sardinia, and a cynically hateful bureaucrat from the Justice Deparment named Paul Krendler (Ray Liotta), who experiences the unkindest cut of all.

It's never a question of what or where in this film, only of when. It has more the feel of a film such as "Halloween" than that of a psychological thriller, because we know that it is only a matter of time before Jason (or in this case, Lecter) strikes. And this time when the good doctor works on Clarice's weaknesses, it's almost familiar territory, as if we were eavesdropping on a married couple bickering in an upstairs apartment.

Despite the noble efforts, well-paced direction by Ridley Scott ("Blade Runner," "Gladiator"), a clever script by David Mamet ("House of Games") and Steven Zaillian ("Schindler's List"), and a wonderful, moody score by Hans Zimmer, the film ends up being a salon piece, a bauble.

The good news is that there are gorgeous shots of various palazzos in Florence, and also strong performances by an ensemble cast. Hopkins, whose performance is more difficult to gauge in the film, is fun to watch no matter what, just as Marlon Brando was in "The Godfather," where he hammed it up from start to finish.

The capable Moore has a thornier task. She has to replace a popular actress (Jodie Foster) who objected to this film's overly graphic content.

But by the end Moore will probably have won you over, and if you allow yourself the guilty pleasure of rooting for a cannibal and a serial killer, so will have Hopkins. Call it a measure of society's perversity that Dr. Lecter can be as much a cultural icon as was James Bond in the '60s.

Or maybe it's just that Hopkins is truly accomplished, so much so that our eating habits will never be the same again.