RED DRAGON - Bitesize Review # 12

RED DRAGON **½

USA/Germany: Brett Ratner, 2002.
Format: Original Theatrical Release

Note: My bitesize review was originally published by the Kent Messenger Newspaper Group (24.10.2002) and refers to the theatrical run of the film.

Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter has seen the serial killer with a taste for human flesh become modern cinemas most memorable villain. In Red Dragon, Hopkins third and final appearance as Lecter, we are taken back to the very beginning and witness the arrest of the brilliant but psychological disturbed psychiatrist.

Adapted from the first of Thomas Harris' Lecter novels, Red Dragon establishes a storyline very similar to the subsequent The Silence of the Lambs. A sexual serial killer known as the "Tooth Fairy", played by Ralph Fiennes, has killed two entire families leaving the FBI without any firm leads. Incarcerated in a high security prison Lecter becomes a consultant on the case.

Reuniting Lecter with the man responsible for his capture, detective Will Graham, played by Edward Norton, the film echoes the one-on-one sparring between Lecter and Clarice Starling. Unfortunately, the tension and intimacy of those meetings, so key to the success of Silence of the Lambs, are never recaptured and what is left instead is the exaggerated, all too knowing performance of Lecter first displayed by Hopkins in Ridley Scott's Hannibal.

Indeed, it could be suggested Red Dragon is at its most thrilling when Lecter is left to ponder events from within his cell, while the action centres on detective Graham analysing the crime scenes. Graham has a special if not welcome ability to get inside criminal mindset of killers such as the "Tooth Fairy". However, it is unavoidable not to come to the conclusion that we have seen all these narrative elements before – most notably in Michael Mann's original film adaptation of this novel by Thomas Harris, Manhunter – and this is perhaps where Red Dragon disappoints the most.

The former film was a dark and brooding thriller which intelligently handled the motivation behind the "Tooth Fairy" and his frenzied acts of murder. Manhunter also went much further and more assuredly into detective Will Graham's psychological connection with Hannibal Lecter. Such subtlety and menace is never reproduced in Red Dragon with the resulting re-telling of this story being a solid but decidedly average crime thriller.