Ridley Scott (“Alien”, “Gladiator”) directs “Hannibal”, the follow-up to “The Silence of the Lambs” and in many ways it is good as it takes just about every route a sequel to that film could have successfully gone down but for me it just didn’t do any of them especially well.

In “Hannibal”, F.B.I. agent Starling (Julianne Moore “Magnolia”, “The Big Lebowski”) is put on the trail of infamous cannibal Hannibal Lecter, who is still played fascinatingly by Anthony Hopkins (“Thor”, “Magic”) after the only surviving victim of Lecter’s attacks named Mason Verger (Gary Oldman “Batman Begins”), who desperately seeks to see Lecter suffer, says he has some information.

Jodie Foster, who played Clarice in the original, was decent but her performance seems excellent when compared to Julianne Moore’s because I felt something was severely lacking in this one. Anthony Hopkins is great as always as Hannibal but the script isn’t as smart here as the other films. Gary Oldman plays the disfigured victim, who is the other villain of the film as it also explains that before he was attacked that he was a child molester, and it’s interesting to see two villains like this but sadly Oldman’s character doesn’t get too much to do. Giancarlo Giannini (“Casino Royale”) is good as a small-time detective who decides to capture Lecter himself but the script hinders what he does.

“Hannibal” has the strange romance between Lecter and Starling, a revenge plot and a small-timer trying to bring the guy in but it doesn’t dedicate enough to any of these for them to work. The violence in this film is grotesque as a man is hanged and his bowls fall out simultaneously and worst of all a man is drugged, cuts of his face and feeds it to his dogs and although it is shocking it kind of works as it makes the brutality of the film more realised. I love the Lecter character as he’s sophisticated, charming, romantic, poetic and brutal but I’ve yet to see him in a film that perfectly accommodates him. Scott’s film is artsy but messy.