50 God-Tier Acting Moments Buried in Bad Movies

Anthony Hopkins' performance as Hannibal Lecter might've been parodied to death, and yet even now, watching him in the part is the most remarkable experience. There will never be a better Hannibal - not even Mads Mikkelsen's sublime performance in Bryan Fuller's masterful Hannibal TV series can quite measure up to it.

One of Hopkins' very best scenes as the character is this gloriously brutal moment from 2001's Hannibal, the direct sequel to The Silence of the Lambs. Hannibal, now hiding in Florence, discovers that policeman Rinaldo Pazzi (Giancarlo Giannini) is planning to kidnap him and send him back to the United States. Lecter then proceeds to subdue Pazzi and sadistically interrogate him, concluding with one final question: "Bowels in or bowels out? Like Judas?"

As Pazzi is currently gagged, Lecter decides for him. He disembowels Pazzi and then throws him over the balcony, in a twisted reference to the hanging of the Pazzi conspirators, an event Lecter had mentioned several times throughout the film. In this gnarly kill scene, Hopkins is perfect. He's terrifying, intelligent, darkly witty, and utterly captivating, and the fact that Hopkins still gave such a masterful performance in what is otherwise a terrible, badly-written sequel to a classic makes it that much more impressive.