"Tell me Clarice, would you ever say to me 'Stop. If you loved me, you'd stop'?" "Not in a thousand years."

What I had heard about this movie before was that it's bullshit. I think my dad used the word "juvenile." (Actually he used a word of our dialect that can't be fully translated.) But then again, what the Internet and cover of the movie - and the book - have said, everything was quite positive.

What's my stand? Well, Hannibal certainly isn't as good as Silence Of The Lambs, but I didn't expect it to be. Also, I sort of liked it. But I'll see if I like it after I've read the book, and I see the true differences between the book and the movie. But I really like the movie now. It was very suspenseful, but also in a different way than Silence Of The Lambs. The thrill, the weird charge between Clarice and Dr. Lecter was always distanced, with a glass or bars between them. Now, there wasn't glass or bars, Dr. Lecter wasn't in prison or asylum any more. At first, though, characters are still distanced, since Clarice is in US, Dr. Lecter is in Florence. Later on they, of course, meet again, and there it is - the tension that were there in the Silence of the Lambs.

But then again - tension and chemistry is a bit different. Mostly because in Silence of the Lambs it was between Anthony Hopkins and Jodie Foster - in Hannibal it's between Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore. I really liked Foster as Clarice, but I don't have anything bad to say about Moore either. She's a fantastic actress, and she was just as good as Clarice Starling as Foster was. But of course there's differences there too - but the stories are 10 years apart, of course Starling would be a different person after ten whole years. In Silence of the Lambs she isn't even an agent, she's a trainee. in Hannibal she's a full-time agent, already used to everything. So, Moore's Clarice is a bit more mature, if  that is the right word to use.

Of course the movie had it's juvenile moments, that were a bit like "ugh", but still, I think the suspense in the movie sort of made up for all that. 

Also, maybe we got something else out of Lecter's character as well. End of this movie was a proof that he's not a complete psychopath. You do know what psychopath is? Lack of empathy and feelings would be one of the most recognisable characteristics. You can look it up. But Lecter definitely has some kind of feelings for Clarice - really complicated feelings but they are there. If he was a complete psychopath, there wouldn't be any feelings at all, I think. But I think this makes Lecter's character truly scarier than other serial killer characters. They are so clearly insane, it's not convincing character anymore. But then there's Dr. Lecter, who is so clearly sane it's scary. He's completely aware of everything he does, so if he had a mental illness or anything, he'd be a psychopath, but his relationship with Clarice proves otherwise.