"Hannibal Rising" is unusual for me in that I liked the movie more than the book. True, a picture may be worth a thousand words, but there is only so much a movie-maker can do considering limited budgets and time spans. People generally want to see a movie in the frame of a couple of hours whereas reading a book requires a longer attention span. This, of course, opens the door for a lot more development and reflection.

"Hannibal Rising" the movie is actually impressively close to the novel. I’m sure this has something to do with the involvement of writer Thomas Harris in the development of the screenplay. The downfall of this is that the story isn’t particularly all that good so the failings of the writer carry over to the movie as well.

It’s considered “horror” in its classification, but it’s really not. It’s a revenge story pitting one villain against others. It's a prequel tale in the Hannibal Lecter series. I'm pretty sure it was the last story written, but it takes place years before the first story. That’s part of what does make this story interesting, though.

The Hannibal we know from "Red Dragon," "Silence of the Lambs," and "Hannibal" doesn’t yet exist. At the start of "Hannibal Rising" he’s just a boy, no more evil than little Anakin Skywalker. When his family is killed in WWII he and his sister become the captives of war criminals. Jump ahead a few years and teen Hannibal is so traumatized he is mute. He can’t remember what happened to him except for snippets that plague his dreams. He is taken in by his aunt who trains him in the way of the Samurai. He takes the feudalistic ways to the extreme.

As he remembers more and more of what happened in his childhood he seeks out the men who wronged him and brings his vengeance to them. The hatred in his heart and inability to cope with truths he learns puts him on the road to becoming the serial killer we love to fear.

This story isn’t so much about his becoming the serial killer as it is the story of a soul being corrupted. In this way the movie succeeds. It’s unrealistic to think Hannibal would be born a cannibalistic killer. Like all men, including the ones he himself kills, he does not set out to do evil for the sake of evil, he is doing what he thinks is right. It is because he dances with the devil that he descends into moral depravity.

Likewise he doesn’t begin eating people for no reason. He begins the practice as an element of his vengeance, and as he sinks into insanity he seems to develop a taste for human flesh that he wouldn’t have had otherwise. The progression from a vigilante using cannibalism as a retribution to a serial killer who craves the taste of human flesh is beyond the plot of this story and occurs between "Hannibal Rising" and "Red Dragon."

So if the progression from boy to villainous cannibal is good why isn’t the story better? I think part of it may be that the audience wanted more of a serial killer thriller than a revenge plot out of a Hannibal story. Perhaps Harris would have done better if he had put the revenge plot in the first portion of the story and then moved on to Hannibal’s early actions as a full-fledged sociopath.

I think a lot of people, including myself, were hoping for a look at the events that led to his capture by Will Graham. We know that the pair were investigating a series of murders for which Hannibal was evidently responsible, but that’s about it. I guess since we’ve already seen the ending of that story with Hannibal’s capture and attempted murder of Will it would be hard to weave a story leading up to that with much surprise in it.

The whole Samurai aspect seems out of place to me. I can’t see why Harris included it. Hannibal in later years displays no hint of having formal Martial Arts training nor any particular affinity that I can recall for anything Oriental. Perhaps it’s just a way to show the birth of his interest in cultures or his gauge of what is proper. He is, after all, much put off by rudeness, and the Samurai way is serious about respect and honor.

The bottom line is that while there are some interesting elements to the story it’s just not as gripping as others have been. Compared to the other movies I would say that "Hannibal Rising" is nowhere near as good as "Silence of the Lambs" not quite as good but not far behind "Red Dragon "/ "Manhunter" and is actually better, if only marginally so, than "Hannibal" (for which I didn’t care much).

I’ve never heard of any of the actors in this movie, but I think the performances are largely quite good. I like the young actor playing Hannibal and think him fittingly chilling. I know a lot of people feel his heavy accent is inconsistent with Anthony Hopkins, but that could be explained with Hannibal working to rid himself of his accent after he left for the Americas. He doesn’t look exactly like Hopkins either, but what did you expect, Hopkins in makeup to make him appear to be a teen?

There are some omissions from the novel. For instance, there is no mention of any stolen art or anything that went along with that subplot. Other things are trimmed like the lack of any setup to Hannibal’s escape from the cellar at the orphanage. Very little has been actually changed, though. This is probably one of the more faithful book-to-screen translations out there.

"Hannibal Rising" is not a great movie, but it’s not bad. I guess it’s going to depend somewhat on what expectations you take into it with you. It’s quite a bit different than the other Hannibal movies in tone and focus, and that alone may be enough to keep it from being satisfying. The message I get out of it is similar to what I got out of "Saw 3": thirst for revenge tends to destroy rather than satisfy.