What made the original incarnation of the mass-murdering, culturally savvy Hannibal Lecter so psychologically intriguing - and downright seductive - was that we didn't have a clue who he was.

In his first outing - Michael Mann's Manhunter - he was a peripheral albeit essential character while it was only in Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs that we felt we had been formally introduced.

Subsequent appearances - Red Dragon, Hannibal - merely served to put more flesh on the bones while emotionally stripping the enigmatic cannibal killer of the menacing mystique which made him so wantonly attractive in the first place.

This takes the formative (not really a word which does justice to what goes on) years of the young Hannibal, from his comfortable upper class upbringing as the son of a Lithuanian nobleman to the teenage killer, already well-versed in the homicidal arts.

In between, we discover the driving reason behind his chilling transformation from well-adjusted minor aristocrat to psychopathic flesh-eater with a side order of culture and formal manners.

With the advancing Red Army sweeping the Germans back across Lithuania, Hannibal and his sister Mischa see their parents killed and are captured by a marauding band of Lithuanian deserters led by the slyly vile Grutas (Ifans).

Sheltering from the biting cold in a ramshackle villa, the starving renegades find their appetites wandering towards the unspeakable - making a casserole of H's terrified and uncomprehending little sister.

Eight years down the line, Hannibal (Ulliel) breaks out of a Soviet-era orphanage, and makes his way east across post-war Europe to the chateau of his beautiful French aunt Lady Murasaki (Gong Li).

Taking the mute youngster in, she nurtures the damaged teenager until he displays an icy composure, a vocation for medical school (autopsies are a particular fave) and is something of a dab hand with a Samurai sword.

In fact, by the very nature of the film (Hannibal Begins?), so much is revealed about Lecter's origins that it winds up accounting for the very essence of his evil - a situation that inevitably dilutes the sublime enigma of the man.

Where both Brian Cox and Anthony Hopkins brought a sadistic stillness suffused with charm to the role, Ulliel acts sly and shifty with an ASBO seemingly the best method of dealing with him.

What we're left with is an overlong backstory and the bizarre situation where Lecter is turned into a sort of hero while he violently works his way through the thoroughly evil rotters who feasted on poor ickle Mischa.

The fact remains, the less we knew about Hannibal the more we liked him.

Tim Evans