3/10, 2/10
HANNIBAL (2001)/HANNIBAL RISING (2007). There was only ever one good Hopkins/Lecter film - Silence Of the Lambs. Jodie Foster and director Jonathan Demme had enough sense to bail out of the sequel, which misses everything that made Lambs so special. Once Lecter becomes the central figure, he loses the sensual menace that engaged us first time round. Hannibal Rising is an even more misbegotten idea, a prequel in which we discover how Lecter came to be the way he was – but once again, that robs him of his Otherness, and he just becomes another creep with a cause.
