HANNIBAL (2001). In 1991's The Silence of the Lambs, Anthony Hopkins's sly performance as flesh-eating genius Hannibal Lecter made unspeakable evil palatable through understated charm. But Hopkins was on screen for only about 25 minutes; the true subject of the film was rookie FBI agent Clarice Starling, whose encounters with Lecter helped her become a stronger person and a better agent. In Hannibal, however, Clarice is the supporting character and the gruesome Lecter is front and center, making only minimal attempts to disguise himself or hide his appetite for brutality -- maybe playing for laughs is Hopkins's way of making the character less objectionable. Clarice, however, has stagnated as a character: her FBI career has hit the glass ceiling; she's made powerful enemies at the Justice Department, notably Paul Krendler (played by Ray Liotta as nasty, churlish clown); and she has no hint of a personal life. (Julianne Moore plays her with steely resolve and painfully earned maturity; Jodie Foster is not missed.) Lecter can't corrupt Clarice, so he degrades her in the climax by removing her moral agency and making her a passive spectator to his brain-damaging theater of abomination. Maybe this sequence is director Ridley Scott's way of confronting the audience, as he did last year in Gladiator. Maybe it's a Lecter-like statement of perverse artistic integrity; Scott serves up Harris's horrific ending with a brazenness that seems to dare the studio censors or the MPAA to cut it. Maybe it's the capstone to a display of incredible technical skill at depicting gore from the inventively gory director of Alien and Blade Runner. Or it could just be a Troma flick with more bucks and more-realistic special effects, the most cynical and expensive exploitation movie yet made.

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