Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #5529 in DVD
• Released on: 2007-06-25
• Rating: Suitable for 18 years and over
• Format: PAL
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Running time: 125 minutes

Amazon.co.uk Review
Though Hannibal Rising's Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) is a pussycat compared to Anthony Hopkins in Silence of the Lambs, this sequel's story of revenge is grizzly enough to satisfy lovers of Thomas Harris's epic tale. After young Hannibal (Aaron Thomas) is forced to watch his little sister, Mischa (Helena Lia Tachovska), devoured by starving soldiers in his homeland Lithuania, Hannibal vows to avenge his sister's death by slaying those who committed not only war crimes against the Lecters, but also against other families during WW II.

In detailing Hannibal's revenge plan, the film investigates the psychological implications of witnessing cannibalism to justify Hannibal's insatiable appetite for human flesh. The most interesting aspect of Hannibal Rising--its analytical connections drawn between Hannibal's childhood traumas and his murderous adult obsessions--is also the film's weak point. The links oversimplify Lecter's complex character. For example, though titillating to see flashbacks of Lecter's sister hacked up and boiled while Lecter visits a Parisian meat market, the reference is too obvious. One learns why he excels in his medical school classes dissecting cadavers, and we're given explicit explanation for why he slices off and eats his victims' cheeks. The story only complicates when Hannibal interacts with his sexy Aunt, Lady Murasaki (Gong Li). When Murasaki educates him in the art of beheading, the viewer sees Hannibal's sword fetish as a manifestation of physical lust. --Trinie Dalton

Synopsis
Long before a certain cannibal sipped his first Chianti or dined on his first human liver, a young boy named Hannibal Lecter received a stark lesson in mortality as war raged around him. But of all the horrors he witnessed growing up in Lithuania, none could have prepared him for the brutal murder of his family at the hands of the Nazis. Somehow, he manages to survive this horrific ordeal and ends up years later in France, where he studies medicine and forensics. But despite all his academic achievements, Lecter is haunted by memories of the abuse he faced as a child, and sets out to exact revenge on the predators who robbed him of his innocence. The film raises some interesting questions about the nature of evil; is a person born evil or do they gradually become evil as a result of their environment? While offering no conclusive answer, director Peter Webber does appear to subscribe to the latter theory. In the same way that MONSTER turned serial-killing prostitute Aileen Wuornos into a sympathetic figure, HANNIBAL RISING tries to humanise Lecter by putting his later actions into context of this tragic upbringing. Despite the notable absence of Anthony Hopkins, rising star Gaspard Ulliel (A VERY LONG ENGAGEMENT) delivers a credible performance as the young Hannibal Lecter with just the right balance of charm and menace. Based on Thomas Harris’ book of the same name, Webber’s dark and intense prequel offers a valuable insight into the background and psyche of a character that has fascinated and terrified audiences ever since they were introduced to him in SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

DVD Description
At last, the evolution of his evil is revealed. Hannibal Lecter emerges from the nightmare of the Eastern Front, a boy in the snow, mute, with a chain around his neck. He seems utterly alone, but he has brought his demons with him. Hannibal's uncle, a noted painter, finds him in a Soviet orphanage and brings him to France, where Hannibal will live with his uncle and his uncle's beautiful and exotic wife, Lady Murasaki. Lady Murasaki helps Hannibal to heal.With her help he flourishes, becoming the youngest person ever admitted to medical school in France. But Hannibal's demons visit him and torment him.When he is old enough, he visits them in turn. He discovers he has gifts beyond the academic, and in that epiphany, Hannibal Lecter becomes death's prodigy.

Customer Reviews

Crime always has roots
The book was perfect, the film is even more perfect than perfect. It is exactly what we could have dreamed of. The story is the absolute logical explanation of the previous volumes about Hannibal Lecter and we cannot think of one detail in these earlier volumes that is not the direct consequence of what happens in this later volume that tells the infancy, teenage and youth of Hannibal Lecter. What makes it so fascinatingly believable is that this period of his life is situated in Lithuania during the war and in the Soviet union and in France after the war. The political elements, allusions or direct references are correct even if at times slightly simplified, for instance the butcher, the first victim of Hannibal Lecter's on the French territory, who was a collaborator during the war and took part in the sending of some Jews to deportation could go on with his profession in spite of the hatred he had accumulated among people because as a butcher he must have taken part in a lot of black market operations and most post war higher ups or councilors and representatives in his zone must have used his services in a way or another during the war, to sell the meat they produced on their farms or to buy the meat they could not have with the food coupons. But that lack of precision is already in the book. But a little bit of research on such a point, and others, would have made the film even more believable. The man Hannibal Lecter, and his psychology are really clarified. He was traumatized by what he went through and he never managed to get out of it, to forget it, to forgive the criminals, etc. But is a man that resilient to be able to forgive and forget seeing his own younger sister being cooked in her own copper bathtub and then eaten by a bunch of wild human beasts? I guess we would like to think so. But what we are sure of is that no matter how much you forget something, that thing remains in your mind and can manipulate you any time anywhere unconsciously. All people who suffer such traumas do not become criminals but most of them have some blank moments and their general attitude is either one of distantiation or one of extreme orthodoxy along some ethical or ideological line. For example we have not really thought of the impact of the torturing and execution of the early Christians on the very corpus of their beliefs and principles. How can some persecuted group defend the principle of loving their enemies who are putting them to death in atrocious ways everyday? That is what this film is all about and it shows how relentless the victim of such violence can become, and that is not vengeance. It is justice in the eye of plain humanity, in the eye of what they have suffered, in the eye of God even. But the good question remains to know where the police, or more generally the forces that are supposed to defend law, order, justice, freedom and many other principles, were at the time of the crimes. No one can answer even when one war criminal of that type is caught up like Papon in France who was tried in the late 1990s for crimes against humanity he committed in Bordeaux in 1944 after a complete career in the top administration or the government of the country. He was the police and the direct representative of the state in Bordeaux hence law and order in 1944. The problem we have to solve is then what do we do for these people who suffered such horrible crimes after the end of the period concerned. What do we do with the victims of the war in Iraq, both American GIs who come back completely disturbed and Iraqis who are going to be haunted by what they suffered for decades. There is no easy answer to that question.

Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris Dauphine, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne & University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines

An absolute disaster of a movie.
The plot follows the book slavishly and woodenly, and most of the subtlty which could have been included was just left out. The result is a crudely and cheaply made pastiche of what was never a particularly inspired story anyway. Not one of Harris' best.

best since silence of the lambs
decent addition to the hannibal saga that gives die hard fans all the gore they could want and while the ultimate revelation about why hannibal does become a cannibal is a bit dissapointing, its a well made and decently acted movie that dosent add anyhing new but it is a much more satisfing entry than the rubbish hannibal and the dull red dragon