"Hannibal Rising" | Ohh, the bandits ate his sister

It worked with "Casino Royale" and "Batman Begins," and they're doing the same to scrape marrow from the "Star Trek" movies.

So of course they went back to the beginning with Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter. But why — in a movie about an adolescent male, no less — would they pick such an unfortunate title? Focus groups, people. This is not "Porky's."

In Lithuania at the end of WWII, the really young Hannibal (Aaron Thomas) watches his parents die as they flee their castle. Then, starving bandits find the fiercely protective little boy with his even younger sister, Mischa (Helena-Lia Tachovska), and they eat her.

Movie review

Showtimes and trailer

"Hannibal Rising," with Gaspard Ulliel, Gong Li, Rhys Ifans, Kevin McKiddand Dominic West. Directed by Peter Webber from a screenplay by Thomas Harris. 121 minutes. Rated R for strong grisly violent content and some language/sexual references. Several theaters.

Fast-forward several years to the teen Tiger Beat Hannibal: French actor Gaspard Ulliel. He's androgynously pretty, with shark eyes and a scar on one cheek that makes him look like The Joker when he smiles. He doesn't speak, except during nightmares. And as the orphanage headmaster tells him, "You don't honor the human pecking order. You're always hunting other boys."

Fleeing the cruel institution, Hannibal finds his uncle's hot Asian widow (Gong Li), who mentors him in various samurai-related ways and coaxes words out of him. She owns a suit of armor whose face mask preposterously foreshadows what adult Anthony Hopkins Hannibal will wear to keep him from biting people in 1991's "Silence of the Lambs."

After an encounter with a fat, lecherous brute unleashes his inner cannibal, Hannibal sets off to find the men who ate his sister. (They include a snarling Rhys Ifans and Kevin McKidd from HBO's "Rome.") He becomes a kind of twisted hero, offing the even-worse bad guys — who all still hang out together and deal in sex-slavery — in different creative ways ...

Hey! This is just another damn body-count slasher revenge flick! But really nice-looking: the "Babette's Feast"-meets-"Friday the 13th" of serial-killer origin films.

Director Peter Webber did the gorgeous and stately "Girl with a Pearl Earring"; and with a weak first-time screenplay from Hannibal's novelist Thomas Harris, he can't find a pace here that achieves a lick of suspense. Perhaps aware of how even sillier 2001's "Hannibal" looks in retrospect, they seem to be trying not to leave openings for unintentional laughter. And yet they name the detective who's on to our hero (Dominic West from HBO's "The Wire") "Popil" — pronounced like Popeil, the maker of slicing and dicing devices ending in "o-Matic."

Diminishing returns had well been reached by "Red Dragon" (2002), the pointless remake of 1986's "Manhunter," which introduced Lecter. Also, keeping Lecter's past enigmatic makes him scarier. (See: "imagination.") But if they were going to show how he got to be the brilliant, charming, exquisitely cultured, uh, vicious cannibal psychopath — couldn't they have come up with something more interesting?

Let's consult the Blurb-o-Matic: This won't give you much to chew on.

Mark Rahner: 206-464-8259 or mrahner@seattletimes.com