Hannibal (DVD, 2001, 2-Disc Set, Special Edition)

This special edition of "Hannibal" comes with two discs. The standard commentaries, featurettes, deleted and alternate scenes, and stills. It’s two hours and eleven minutes long, and even if you’ve never seen “Silence of the Lambs,” the prequel, it’s surely a movie to keep you “on the edge of your seat.”

Hannibal gets a four out of five from me, and here’s why:

The good things: Anthony Hopkins is back. Do you need another reason? Joking aside, Hopkins continues to do an amazing role as Lecter, giving us the chills as he always does. Now he’s out of his cage, and who knows what he’ll do now.

Ridley Scott also does a wonderful job as director. The characters shine with emotion, and the scenes are shot with grace and careful planning.

Hans Zimmer has some creepy music set up for us in the movie, reminding us of how bad Lecter really is.

The screenplay is well written as well, if you like gore and disturbing images. You’re going to find a lot of that in “Hannibal,” more so than in “Silence of the Lambs.” It’s rated “R” for a reason.

Now the screenplay was well written up to the end, which is where we’ll go into:

The bad things: the ending of the movie I found controversial. No spoilers here, but I liked the ending they originally had, the one that Jodie Foster said needed to be changed before she would consider playing Agent Starling. Even after they changed it she couldn’t play the role because she was too busy with two other projects. Though I’m sure others will tell me I’m crazy for liking the original ending better (it was never shot), the ending Thomas Harris had for his novel, but it gave the story more substance that way. The way the movie ends makes the whole movie really have no point.

Julianne Moore was also a drawback. I really would have liked Jodie Foster to play Starling, and though Moore does a good job, it’s still not quite the same without her.

Again, the way the movie ended provided no reason for the story to exist. If the ending had been filmed the way the novel was written, despite the bigger controversy over it, I think it would have made the movie better.

Many of the deleted scenes worked for the movie and should have been left in.

“Hannibal” is still a good movie, and you can watch it without having seen “Silence of the Lambs,” but seeing the prequel makes it even more enjoyable. A great flick.

The sequel to "Silence of the Lambs" scores well, and that is unusual for sequels. Most sequels do not live up to the quality of the original movie. "Hannibal" takes place approximately ten( 10) years later after "Silence", and leads the audience to Florence, Italy, where Dr. "Hannibal" Lecter is living as an escaped wanted man. Hannibal, played superbly by Sir Anthony Hopkins, makes the most of his life on-the-run, but inevitably his instincts enable him to sense his near-capture, and counter-plan. Hannibal seizes this opportunity to interact with FBI Agent Clarice Starling, played by Julianne Moore instead of the original actress Jodie Foster. Ms. Moore does an excellent job, and she is credible as Ms. Fosters' casting replacement. Gary Oldman plays the disfigured villain that sets a trap for Hannibal, and this trap is gruesome in nature. The locations in this movie are fantastic, and with world-wide ranges from Florence to Washington DC, to Sardina, and the Estate in North Carolina, the Biltmore Estate. "Silence" won the five( 5) major categories of Academy Awards, this movie could have won the same.

Another chapter of Dr. Hannibal Lecters' dark shadow cast upon the Earth unveils itself slowly this time and paces itself as more elements and characters come into focus to fill in more of the story of the not so good doctors' life before and since The Silence OF The Lambs made him a worldwide sensation.

With excellent performances from Julianne Moore, Gary Oldman and Ray Liotta, Anthony Hopkins steals the show again as the derranged canibal he seems like he was born to play. Another academy award worthy screenplay by the master David Mamet, brings us a dark, disturbed and sometimes brutal film that is impossible to take your eyes off of.

I am being very generous by giving this film 3 out of 5 stars. It was a bad sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Which is one of the best suspense/horror films of all time. Anthony Hopkins tried his best in a poorly written movie. I also did not like the way they changed "Clarice's". I wish they would have brought back Jody Foster, she nailed that role. To be fair I will close with a few positve notes. Anthony Hopkins and Ray Liotta acted well. And it was filmed in beautiful locations, such as Italy and Florida. I strongly urge people to either rent this movie or purchase it, watch it, sell it. It's not worth keeping.

And yet another movie with varied reviews....I personally think this sequel to Silence of the Lambs doesn't disappoint. It doesn't particularly feel a whole lot like a sequel, and I think that it was intended to be it's own movie and not just rely on the success of the first. I am a huge horror movie fan and have seen them all, and I, personally, think that it has one of the most disgusting scenes of any horror movie, toward the end...don't want to ruin it for you, if you haven't seen it, but it reminds us why Hannibal has acquired the nickname Hannibal the Cannibal. And poor Ray Liotta, well, you have to see it to believe it. The only other thing is that Julianna Moore does a good job as Clarice, even though it was hard to fill Jodie Foster's shoes.