"Hannibal" had pretty big shoes to fill and mostly succeeds, with great craft and many good ideas; but there's also a few irritants-occasional, and chronic.

Some actors do an outstanding job: Laurence Fishburne flawlessly portrays Jack Crawford's "misleading obtuse mien", Raúl Esparza actually elevates the thankless Chilton role, and Richard Armitage's chilling physical performance of Dolarhyde was arresting. Dancy and Mikkelsen are quite up to snuff, too, but could've notched down their respective extremes: Graham too often one breath short of epileptic, and Lecter a bit too inexpressive (though at least compensated by a livelier physicality); still, I wish they'd gone with a native English speaker for a character whose every meticulous word we're supposed to hold on to, and is never said in the novels to have a thick accent.

Gillian Anderson is a fine actress and her Du Maurier character a good idea, but what was with the slow talk? If it meant her treading carefully to try and keep up with Lecter, it just left me drowsy. Mason Verger was another letdown: a hardly menacing baby-faced prat pre-Hannibal, afterwards he goes into a lame imitation of Gary Oldman sans the masterful underlying sadness.

The visuals are evocative and classy, softening the relatively abundant gore, though the cinematographer may have been a bit too in love with slow-motion close-ups of splashed liquids (no, not just blood).

What annoyed me the most is excessive quoting from the novels and movies. I don't mind a couple winks to the fandom, but so much of it became off-putting, especially as some of the quotes were so utterly trivial; "... and a modest outlay for two bags of cement"? Come on, it ain't Shakespeare.