For those interested in seeing Hannibal, you'll find greater enjoyment of the movie if you avoid comparing it to Silence of the Lambs, its smashing predecessor. Hannibal has a different style, altered tone, and a sweeping change in story emphasis. In short, it's bigger, simpler, and a bit more predictable. That being said, director Ridley Scott (in his Gladiator follow-up) brings on an effective, sometimes faulty, marginally successful thriller. Just don't expect to be knee-deep in the mind games of Jonathan Demme's superior 1991 classic.
             The action picks up some months after Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter's escape from that homey, isolated cell in Silence of the Lambs. He has fled to Florence, somehow conniving his way into a position as a museum curator, where he can cultivate and brag about his knowledge of the arts, most notably works depicting brutal hangings.
             Meanwhile back in the US, FBI agent Clarice Starling (a very capable Julianne Moore, slipping nicely into Jodie Foster's creation) is in boiling hot water for the botched arrest of an HIV-positive drug lord, and feels her career slipping away as a result. She soon meets with Mason Verger (Gary Oldman), a wounded, deformed man with lavish wealth, who is hell-bent on capturing and torturing Lecter by making him swine meal. It seems that Lecter once drugged the man in a social setting, and then convinced him to tear off pieces of his face with a glass shard and feed them to a dog. Payback really must be a bitch.
             Anyway, Lecter (the slithery Anthony Hopkins, if you didn't already know) somehow ends up back on the FBI's Most Wanted list. And he also contacts Starling again, continuing their unique game of cat-and-mouse.
             One big problem with the story, however, is that we really don't know why this happens. That's a major trip-up in the script, where the motivation for action is sacrificed in the name of just c
             ...