Review of Hannibal Rising (2007) by Stevea. — 10 Feb 2007

I actually liked the premise of this movie: it was a fitting Hollywood beginning for Hollywood's greatest villian (although, the power of SOTL was its realism). It was the painfully SLOW pacing and bad acting that killed it for me.

Gong Li actually acted very well in this movie, although her character was a walking contradiction. The bad guys acted like a bad comedy troupe (seriously, they acted like an atrocious version of the Mighty Python).

The boy who played Lector was just too pretty and sweet natured to play a convincing killer. He portrayed agony very well, but his scenes of evil played out like a bad imitation of Dracula, complete with slicked back hair and the standard Bela Lugosi accent.

Also, that bizarre five inch dimple on the left side of his face was distracting (sorry, I had to go there). A lot of the lines were bad, too. The detective, a throw-away character, says that the boy Lector died with his sister, and that he doesn't know what Lector is now, but whatever it is, it doesn't have a name.

I've heard this same sort of quote in two or three other bad thrillers. Also, there was the scene where Lector carves an "M" into one of the bad guys, and then he says, "That M stands for my sister, Mischa.

" And this whole time, I thought it stood for Mickey Mouse...eyes rolling.