At first they are in Italy(I think) training the hogs when Pazzi calls Mason alerts them to be ready.
They try to get Lecter in Florence, but fail.
Cut to USA.
They capture Lecter and eventually take him to the hogs which are now at Mason's ranch in the states?
Huh?
I must be missing something.
In the book at least I think the kidnappers were Sardinian, though in the movie it seems like they could just as well be from some village in south Italy or Sicily.
There's a deleted scene that shows the wild hogs being delivered to Mason's property. That isn't so unrealistic, with the right paperwork, veterinary inspection, and quarantine you can ship animals from one country to another legally.
The part that bothered me more is the notion that Lecter was able to evade the FBI and Interpol's best and brightest for so long, only to be successfully captured by a family of pig farmers from some rural Italian village.
Ah ok. Thanks for that. I feel like they should have added some dialogue to explain that. Just a short, "Cordell, have the hogs arrived yet?" would have been enough.
That is a bit of a copout, I agree.
I just watched this last night on Netlfix (I assume the same version as on DVD) and there was a scene when Verger was talking to the boar handlers and instructs them to get the boars ready for shipment and that Cordell can handle all the paperwork on the US side but they would have to do some in Sardinia. It was a short scene and you might have just missed it.
~~~"Who do you think you're dealing with? Guess again."~~~