Hannibal Rising
(120 mins, 18)
Directed by Peter Webber; starring Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans, Dominic West

This week, Norman Mailer's new novel sets out to explain the origins of Hitler's monstrous nature and the film version of Thomas Harris's recent novel Hannibal Rising (adapted by the author) deals with the formative years of Hannibal Lecter. The two events are connected because Hannibal's addiction to murder and cannibalism begins in 1944 when his Lithuanian family are escaping from Lecter Castle and get trapped between advancing Russians and retreating Germans. His parents are killed and the 10-year-old lad and his six-year-old sister fall into the hands of five degenerate militiamen, who have been working with the SS. There's no food in their isolated cottage, the beady eyes of these famished killers fall on Hannibal's sister and a trauma is born.

After the horrific opening, the story jumps eight years on and Hannibal (Gaspard Ulliel) is toughing it out in a communist orphanage, where he takes bites out of bullies before escaping to France to meet his Japanese aunt (the beautiful Gong Li). She introduces him to Japanese martial arts, he gets a scholarship to study medicine in Paris and systematically sets about hunting down and carving up the men who killed his sister. It's a sadistic revenge trip involving a cat-and-mouse game between Lecter and a French cop (Dominic West) pursuing war criminals, and there is little question but that the anthropophagous Hannibal is the hero.

Peter Webber directed Scarlett Johansson in the charming movie about Vermeer's muse, but sadly, this murky thriller is more of a pig's ear than a pearl earring. The actors, mostly British, speak with sinister furrin accents.