'Spoiler Alert' is a term used in some reviews to warn readers to skip a few paragraphs ahead so as to not ruin plot points in the film being discussed. In the case of Hannibal Rising I urge you to read these spoilers, because after reading them, if you still want to see the movie, not much will be ruined.

In case you didn't know, Hannibal Lecter eats people. If you can't remember this fact, here's a simple rhyming scheme: Hannibal the cannibal. Apparently no one has remembered this, because everyone in Hannibal Rising wants to remind you that the guy who's eating the people, yeah ... his name is Hannibal Lecter. The repetition of his name in the film is uncanny; I attribute it to the scriptwriter's disdain for pronouns.

So in this prequel of sorts, Hannibal starts out as a young boy in the midst of WWII-ravaged Lithuania. Nazis have taken over his home and only he and his sister have survived. It's the dead of winter and the Nazis have run out of food, so they eat his sister. There it is, people. Nazis ate his sister, so now Hannibal eats everyone.

But wait, wouldn't that deter someone from eating human flesh? Well apparently, Hannibal read a good deal of Hammurabi in his youth, took that "eye for an eye" thing quite literally and sets out to defend his sister Mischa. Oh, and you can't forget her name is Mischa; that's pretty much the only word Hannibal says for the first 45 minutes.

So basically, those who choose to see this are privy to seeing Hannibal turned into a hero by killing Nazis who probably had it coming to them in the first place. Not your cup of tea? Well then Hannibal learning the ways of the Samurai from his Japanese aunt (who he falls in love with) might entertain you. But that's beside the point.

There were very few reasons why the previous Hannibal movies were thrilling. Most of these reasons include impeccable acting by Sir Anthony Hopkins. Hannibal's reasons for becoming this monster of inhumanity were always mysterious and lent to the scariest of all possibilities; maybe there was no reason.

The revenge-based motives for killing in Rising aren't at all consistent with the character that Hopkins played. The version of Hannibal we've all come to know sought out murder and torture for means of personal satisfaction and in no way based it on guilt. He maimed the innocent just as much as the guilty.

One of the more frightening images of Hannibal is in Silence of the Lambs when he is beating a prison guard in an attempt to escape while a piece of soothing classical music plays in the background.

His appreciation for the destruction of a human life is smacked across his face. He brandishes his weapon as if it were a baton, conducting an orchestra. The past Hannibal thought of his murder as art. This one is a Nazi-killing hero. If you don't see the connection, it's because there isn't one.

In Rising, Hannibal is in almost every scene and this goes against everything that was mysterious about the character in previous chapters of the Hannibal series. It's safe to say this plot could probably work a lot better if Hannibal wasn't involved at all, but then again his involvement is the only reason this film was made.

So if you go to the theatre expecting to be shocked by Hannibal's actions, it's all pretty run of the mill at this point. But there is Samurai training and subtle incest that's so ridiculously entertaining it's the only thing saving this movie from an F.

GRADE: D-