I had a little bit of peace & quiet yesterday afternoon and retreated to the coolness of my basement and watched Hannibal. I've seen this movie three times now and have liked it more each time. The first viewing was in the theater and I was really disappointed, probably because of the excessive hype - I saw it the night it premiered. The film stayed pretty true to the book, without getting into some of the smaller subplots.
But I really think Hannibal holds up well with the other three movies in the trilogy. Anthony Hopkins was excellent, as was the barely recognizable Gary Oldman as Mason Verger. I thought that Julianne Moore was an excellent replacement to Jodie Foster's Clarice Starling character. Honestly, Foster was great in Silence of the Lambs, but I don't think she could have pulled as good a performance out of Starling in Hannibal. The only performance I didn't care for was Ray Liotta's Krenzler.
The ending is really hard to watch. Not going to give it away if you haven't seen it, but it's stomach-turning. The dvd I had had an alternate ending in the deleted scenes that was pretty cool.
By far, the best scenes involved Hopkins, both in his alias Dr. Fell character, as well as Hannibal Lecter. My primary criticism of the film is that it was well over an hour before the real action of the film takes place. There is a lot of plot development in the first hour. But it's important to the overall story.
The one minor detail that I really liked was the musical score. There was some subtle piano music that played over a few of Lecter's scenes that really enhanced the film.
