Posted: 10/05/02
Red Dragon (2002)
by Hank Yuloff
Prequel & remake, this go-round is equally disturbing as the original.
original. It is a horror story that thrills with the power of imagination and glimpses of gore. Disturbing, twist in your seat, hair-raising gore. Brett Ratner (The Family Man, Rush Hour 1,2,3) and Ted Tally (All the Pretty Horses) return as the director and screenwriter from the hit film and make the prequel to Silence of the Lambs just as shocking.At its beginning, it is 1980 and we are introduced to Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a brilliant forensic psychiatrist, who we know, if you've paid any attention to popular culture, is also a psychopathic murderer who culls the herd of humanity by determining who doesn't belong. We witness his methods right at the beginning of the movie when we witness the lead flute player in the local orchestra offending Dr. Lecter (and his fellow musicians) with his poor playing. Forward one scene where the Board of Directors of the orchestra is being served dinner around Dr. Lecter's table and only halfheartedly bemoaning the sudden grizzly death of the aforementioned musician. The audience took a collective gasp as we all realized that the board was dining on flambe de flautist. The look on Lecter's face at the end of the scene sets the tone once again for this, the third movie with Anthony Hopkins in the lead role as Hannibal Lecter. This is not violence as we normally see it on our television news. That we can almost understand as acts of passion and desperation. This is the look of brilliant evil that stalks its prey with the coolness of a lioness on the Serengeti. You don't want him to notice you in the theater for fear you will be his next victim.
We witness the capture of Lecter and his relocation from high society to the high security cell where Clarice Starling would find him in 1991's Silence of the Lambs. The FBI agent who put him there is Will Graham (played in the original film, Manhunter, by William Peterson), an investigator with the gift of being able to put himself into the head of a killer. The Lecter case would be the end of his FBI career, 
driving him to a quieter life in Florida. In Red Dragon, he is lured back to help solve a case as difficult and gruesome as the Lecter case, tracking down Lecter's biggest fan. Norton gives us everything. Facial, physical, emotional feelings of a man who is doing something he is good at but knows the terrible mental and possibly physical toll it will take on him. A great example of how close to the edge he gets is when he is confronted by Philip Seymour Hoffman playing Freddy Lounds, an uncaring, get-the-lurid-details hack of a journalist for a national tabloid. Hoffman clearly does not care how offensive he is in his line of questioning, as if he is a Pulitzer winner who's only search is for "truth," at anyone's expense. Hoffman (Almost Famous, State & Main, Flawless) continues to be one of my favorite actors. In fact, this movie gives me large doses of three of my favorites right off the bat with Hoffman, Norton and Hopkins.
Graham (Edward Norton - Fight Club, The Score) is brought in to seek the killer of two seemingly unrelated families in different parts of the country. The killer is Francis Dolarhyde, played brilliantly by Ralph Fiennes (Sunshine, Quiz Show). He feels that through his killings, he is becoming transformed into the Red Dragon - a godlike creature with dominion over humans. Graham, who worked with Lecter on cases before the doctor's imprisonment, is sent to work with him again - something for obvious reasons, Graham is loathe to do. Such begins the FBI agent-killer relationship in Red Dragon that we witnessed in Silence of the Lambs with Jodi Foster. The first time Graham walks down the hallway to Lecter's famous cell, we are watching from the actor's point of view, giving us an in-your-face reminder from the first movie. Though it doesn't seem like it, it takes almost an hour before we are introduced to Fiennes.
At that point, the movie becomes a manhunt populated by two more good performances by Fiennes and Emily Watson, who plays a blind photo lab technician who cannot see the deformities in Dolarhyde, and therefore is allowed to get close to him. I'm not sure which of these 5 actors will get nominated, but as an ensemble they were wonderful. Makeup was also a major undertaking as we had to believe that both Hopkins and Anthony Heald (once again playing Dr. Frederick Chilton) were both younger than they were in Silence of the Lambs, though that movie came out over ten years earlier and the story takes place before the first movie.
The placement of all the pieces to the puzzle makes for a wonderful evening at the movies. Many of them disturbing. One of those pieces is a several inch thick scrapbook that I hope becomes part of the DVD. In it, Dolarhyde follows Lecter's career in crime and his own childhood abuse. Another very disturbing feature I am hesitant to mention but since it isn't intrinsic to the movie's story I will relate it: Dolarhyde is taking photographs during his crimes and the photos we see on screen of his living victims were as unsettling as the after shots of the crime scenes.
If you liked Silence of the Lambs, you must see Red Dragon. A perfect compliment of a movie. Like Godfather I and II, they will be screened together in home living rooms as a pair that go together and should be viewed that way.
Hank Yuloff is an advertising guy in Los Angeles who is tempted to name his next cat Clarice.
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