Grade: B-

Verdict: Expertly prepared and served, but it's a side dish compared to "The Silence of the Lambs," and it leaves a sour aftertaste.

Details: Starring Anthony Hopkins and Julianne Moore. Rated R for strong gruesome violence, some nudity and language. Two hours, 11 minutes.

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Review: Since it's a movie with fine cuisine on its brain, and (at one point) human brain on the menu, it's easy to talk about "Hannibal" in culinary terms.

All the ingredients in this long-anticipated sequel are fresh and procured at considerable expense. The preparation is skillful, the presentation loving, even lavish. The ambience is, um, to die for. But these things only go so far to enrich a dish that's occasionally bitter, bloody and not as complexly flavored as the previous course. While moviegoers are likely to wolf it down, they may feel queasy later.

That's no fault of the filmmakers. Ridley Scott ("Gladiator") takes over from "Silence of the Lambs" director Jonathan Demme, while Julianne Moore fills Jodie Foster's sensible flats as FBI special agent Clarice Starling. It's hard to imagine two better replacements. And, of course, Anthony Hopkins returns in silken, menacing form in the role that earned him an Oscar.

Ten years after she tracked down serial killer Jame Gumb, with the help of Hannibal Lecter's quid pro quo clues, Starling has hit some hard days. Resented for her success and what the men around her call "a smart mouth," she's already body-bruised from bumping the FBI's glass ceiling.

Things get worse when a combined FBI, DEA and D.C. police raid on the kitchen of a drug dealer goes badly wrong. In the media frenzy afterward, Starling is offered up as a sacrificial, but far from silent, lamb by the agency's backroom politicians. Then a call comes from an unlikely savior: Mason Verger (Gary Oldman, unrecognizable under an Elephant Man mask of facial scars), a very wealthy sicko, seeks Starling's help in tracking down the man responsible for Cuisinarting his face and leaving him paralyzed.

Yes, that's our old pal Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins), now enjoying a new identity and life's rich pageant in Florence, Italy. As Lecter plays cat-and-mouse with suspicious local inspector Rinaldo Pazzi (sad-eyed, sympathetic Giancarlo Giannini), director Scott, production designer Norris Spencer and cinematographer John Mathieson make the most of the city's Renaissance glories. The visual and narrative energies fuse to make this section the movie's most successful.

Things get shakier back in the States, as the plot heads toward that troublesome ending that made some readers hate Thomas Harris' novel. (Even if you admired Harris' decision to do exactly as he liked with his characters, the conclusion did read like a sick joke played on the fans who'd made him rich.) David Mamet and Steven Zaillian's screenplay changes that. Their finale is more palatable, though it includes an over-the-top act of violence that seems out of character for Lecter, and leaves you questioning a couple of loose ends. Before we get there, though, they also contrive a tight, gripping action sequence not in the book, set in a busy train station.

While it takes care of the plot's main trouble spot, and eliminates supporting characters like Clarice's roommate and Mason's bodybuilding, sperm-seeking lesbian sister (whew), the movie can't alter the book's lurid, lip-smacking tone.

"Hannibal" is an explicit horror show, revelling in Grand Guignol tactics, like the spectacle of steaming intestines splashing the ground, and even worse things, involving Verger's army of man-eating pigs or Lecter's insistence on dining on only the freshest meats.

By contrast, "The Silence of the Lambs" worked on a more subterranean level, disturbing us largely with what it didn't show us. (The differences in the films are reflected in the novels, so Scott is really just being faithful.) As powerful as its fear-of-the-dark details, "Lambs' " slippery-slope moral stance accounted for much of its effect. By that movie's wickedly funny fade-out, we unexpectedly found ourselves sympathizing with the devil--or, at least, a civilized cannibal with a taste for human liver and a nice Chianti.

"Hannibal" doesn't undermine our values in that way, because it presents a world where normal values have already been inverted. The person who works the hardest for the highest ideals, like Starling, is the likeliest to get beaten down. Here, the Judas figure can be a police officer trying to apprehend a felon, while our substitute Christ (seen in a bizarre crucifixion tableau) is a serial killer. "Hannibal's" landscape is a fallen Eden swarming with snakes; the hard expression of defeat on the once hopeful Starling's face is almost as frightening as Verger's slice-and-dice kisser.

In "Lambs," a sense of dread came to us gradually, like the touch of a cold finger. It holds "Hannibal" in a full-body headlock from the opening credits.

While Demme kept his film poised on an edge between everyday detail and a focused, heightened realism, Scott pushes his movie into more stylized territory, using colored filters, slo-mo, smoke and shadows and herky-jerky flashbacks. He seems to know there's no point in trying to tell this story in a less operatic way; he's the professional barker at what he knows is a freak show.

Hopkins slips into the role like a lotioned hand in a velvet glove. Though hampered by a smaller, simpler part, and much less screen time than Foster had with Hopkins, Moore still manages to make a strong impression as Starling. The supporting cast includes Ray Liotta, in fine, smarmy lather as Starling's nemesis from the Justice Department.

Then there's Oldman, somewhere under all that latex. His performance sometimes verges on camp . . . but given the movie's excesses, that isn't such a bad thing.

— Steve Murray, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution