I find myself strangely compelled to defend this movie since most film critics are falling all over themselves to rip it apart simply because it's a horror film. Sure, it's a totally unnecessary movie and author Thomas Harris has completely sold out, but so what? Is this film any more distasteful than the boatloads of romantic comedies we get to see month after month?

The film is easy to abuse since Harris did a fairly politically incorrect thing by trying to examine why people had an affinity for the older Hannibal Lecter in the previous movies. Harris seemed unaware of the new political correctness, which requires that one never examine the causes of violent, criminal behavior. One should only condemn it, repeat that it's evil over and over again, and make sure whoever might do such things is relegated to prison or the electric chair. In other words, nothing good ever comes from trying to understand why people behave the way they do. We should no more try to understand the inner workings of a murderer than of a terrorist. Their acts are evil. They are evil. They must be eradicated. It's that simple. Stand around trying to figure them out and they'll cut your heart out. Doing such a thing is for wimps. Thomas Harris is quite clearly a pussy.

Compounding the stupidity is the fact that by fleshing out Hannibal Lecter's beginnings, Harris has taken away filmgoers' ability to form their own opinions as to the genesis of his behavior. Prior to "Hannibal Rising" one had a choice of assuming that Lecter was pure evil because he was born that way or because there was a cause. In this case, Lecter is the victim of Nazis who ate his little sister, which is laughably stupid, though does, in some ways, explain Lecter's sympathy for Clarice Starling. If you read "Hannibal" (but avoided the bastardized "Silence" sequel), you know that Lecter's fascination with Clarice is quite deep and that he'd never hurt her.

Frankly, I was disappointed that the young Lecter (Gaspard Ulliel) seems such the wimp. This explains the semi-ridiculous training given to him by Lady Murasaki (Gong Li) whereby he learns various martial arts techniques that allow him to thwart attacks from behind and get out of other sticky situations. Thus, Hannibal is the underdog hero in this film and we hope that he finds the Nazis, particularly the nasty Grutas (Rhys Ifans), and eats them. Even Inspector Popil (Dominic West), who basically has Hannibal figured out, isn't all that interested in arresting him since even if he is a murderer, he's murdering Nazis so who cares. Ultimately, the only reason to flesh such things out is because Harris needed to buy a new yacht or something.

Where the film really fails is in its attempt to make this Hannibal seem like the Hopkins's Hannibal. Ulliel has something going on with one of his cheeks that kept me distracted for a good part of the film. In a perfect world there never would have been a "Hannibal Rising," so there's clearly cause to rail on about its deficiencies, but having recently seen some of the most insidious romantic comedies I can recall, I sometimes warm to the thought that having a serial murderer around can be a good thing.