Nobody took much notice of Michael Mann’s Manhunter, which was released in 1986--before William Petersen, Joan Allen, and Brian Cox made regular appearances in front of mass audiences. However, 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs was a box-office hit and won the Big Five Oscars for its year. These days, everything is franchised as long as moviegoers pay money to see the same characters over and over again, so we saw Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter again in 2001’s Hannibal and 2002’s Red Dragon. While both Hannibal and Red Dragon were hits, people had mostly unkind words for both.

Still, you don’t stop flogging a dead horse until it’s really, really dead, right? Thus, we were treated to Hannibal Rising in 2007. This time, Thomas Harris, the author of the Hannibal-Lecter books, would handle screenwriting duties in addition to writing the source novel. While the Red Dragon and The Silence of the Lambs novels were compact procedurals, Hannibal was a silly, overwrought mess. I have not read Hannibal Rising the book, though I imagine it repeats Hannibal’s excesses given what we are shown in Hannibal Rising the movie.

Like most ill-conceiver prequels, Hannibal Rising explains everything without adding anything to an audience’s appreciation of its fictional universe. This outing turns Lecter into a Euro-trash punk whose cannibalism is apparently justifiable because...the Nazis gave him bad nightmares. Undoubtedly, World War II and the Holocaust did irreparable damage to originally decent people, but now we are asked to think of Lecter as a hero rather than as a villain. This reversal is an unnecessary slap in the face.

Meanwhile, Gong Li plays yet another dragon lady after playing dragon ladies in Memoirs of a Geisha, Miami Vice, and Curse of the Golden Flower. Perhaps Gong should’ve stayed in retirement and left us with nothing but beautiful memories of her early collaboration with Zhang Yimou?

David McCoy