Why Hannibal chose Florence puzzled me until I realized that the infernal doctor had chosen the city of Dante. The excellent Hans Zimmer wrote the rest of the score. Italian culture set aside, or better yet, woven into the film, the results are still pop pulp that tries to spook us. Lecter's old slurp-slurps and much of his anthropophagy have given way to a suspense thriller and detective story. Fine again, except that the story is so muddled and full of holes, so ambitious and bloated with obscurities, improbabilities, impossibilities.
Nothing exceeds like excess.
Some attempts of humor are well hidden. It can't hold a candle to the increasing, real fears about mad cow disease.