The star of the show, Anthony Hopkins, who played the erudite Dr. Lecter as if he were a rogue character from a Merchant Ivory production, had no such qualms. Procuring the services of Julianne Moore as a stand-in for Foster, the hungry Hannibal Lecter money machine was back on course. Now, the killer has arrived in a theater near you. The crazy psychiatrist, with a squirmingly unpleasant penchant for eating the faces of his victims, finds himself pitted against people worse than him. Meanwhile, in the bad doctor's gothic cuckoo brain, there grows an uncanny fondness for his pursuer, Agent Starling, daughter of hardscrabble circumstances entirely unlike the cultivated Lecter's elegant milieu.
Opposites attract as much as they repel.
But this seems to be nothing more than a test given by the doctor to assess how well Starling rises to his occasion. Even if the heart of a cannibal serial killer needs to be warmed once in a while by human affection, the killer's mind is clicking away. Not unlike the futuristic Los Angeles of Blade Runner , Scott excels at choreographing the bustling, teeming city scenes of Florence-so full of life, even as Lecter darkens its ancient streets. Hannibal 's best moments are full of foreshadowing, laced with psychological menace. The worst moments are the most literal-they'd be almost comical if they weren't so grotesque, as when the doctor surgically removes the scalp of an especially stupid FBI agent.