Hannibal. Ridley Scott, 2001.
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Edition screened: MGM/Fox Blu-ray, released 2010. English language. Runtime approximately 131 minutes.
Summary: A dead pigeon is found.
Details: A dead pigeon - just dead, not mangled - is picked up compassionately from a city street, 24:28-24:38. Similar scene, 27:37-27:40.
Hannibal Lecter, at least as portrayed in the films, is a total bore. Yak yak yak, my clothes, my wine, your issues, I am a real doctor you know … . The one thing that makes him slightly interesting isn’t appropriate party chat, and he remains pedestrian and shallow despite the caviar and eurogallivanting. But he does come up with new Gucci shoes and enjoys a boxed lunch from Dean & DeLuca, so I guess he’s made it to the mall.
And now Dr. Humdrum is a Lecterer in Art History in Rome, addressing a select group of sophisticated middle-aged Italians: Today, class, I will rehash the famous plot to kill Lorenzo the Magnificent and that failed attempt’s well-known consequences at the Palazzo Vecchio in which we are gathered today, a topic fueled by my recent discovery of a Renaissance image that all of you have seen a thousand times previously. Even the humiliated descendent of the hanged conspirator nods off despite eminent threat to his life.
Let us review this project’s mission to warn of scenes that depict hurt or violence to animals. In Hannibal, the dead pigeon removed from a city street is barely, tenuously, worth mentioning. The pack of vicious wild boars that is trained to attack and eat people? No, those piggies were as happy as could be, but the scene does deliver a little joke: The blood-frenzied killer pigs immediately identify Lecter as their sovereign, and allow him to stand unharmed in a Christ pose amid their rampage, King of the Bores.