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How far 'Hannibal' has fallen

Gaspard Ulliel stars as Hannibal Lecter in “Hannibal Rising.”

Hannibal Lecter's journey from man-monster of mystery to avenging angel anti-hero is completed in "Hannibal Rising," the new movie from the new Thomas Harris novel.

This is the installment in the tale that deigns to tell us how "Hannibal the Cannibal" developed his love of Japanese samurai iconography and his taste for fava beans. It's the back story, about the World War II atrocities that twisted this child of nobility into a man of sophisticated palate with an eye for fine cutlery.

But "Rising" is a movie that solves a mystery no one should want solved, with more grisly crimes that spare us no detail, held together by an actor who is no Anthony Hopkins.

A prologue set in Lithuania in the final winter of World War II tells us of Hannibal's childhood, the way his parents died and the sister he wanted to protect, but could not. He and his sister run afoul of cutthroats who set the hideous plot in motion with a heinous crime.

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