Red Dragon (2002) from Johnny Web (Uncle Scoopy; Greg Wroblewski)

I can't muster up much enthusiasm to talk about this excellent film, first because so much has already been written about it and the other entries in the Hannibal Lecter series (the MRQE has 209 articles on this film alone), and second because I've already discussed the most interesting plot elements in an earlier review. You see, this is actually the second time that the novel Red Dragon has been brought to the screen. The first time was in 1986 in a Michael Mann film called Manhunter. Since the two films have virtually the same plot, you can get a basic summary from my comments on Manhunter.

Red Dragon could be considered a remake of Manhunter, I suppose, or it could be more accurately called a second film from the same novel. In some cases, the dialogue is equal to Manhunter verbatim. In other cases, notably the beginning end ending, complete scenes have been added which are in neither the theatrical version of Manhunter nor the expanded director's cut. I liked the new beginning and ending in Red Dragon. I have always felt that Manhunter ended rather abruptly, and so I welcomed the fact that Red Dragon extends the denouement a bit with a very clever and tense post script. It is a bit "Hollywood", but it is slick.

The new beginning is just plain excellent. It starts with a few minutes in the life of Dr. Lecter before his capture, and that scene is mediocre, a rather high camp presentation in the elegant grand guignol style of Hannibal, the previous Lecter film. The next scene, however, is a beautiful presentation of the showdown between Agent Graham and Dr. Lecter, which nearly led to death for both of them. The edge is razor-sharp in this scene with excellent pacing from the director, some macabre imagination, and acting from two absolute masters of character, Sir Tony Hopkins and Edward Norton. Very impressive is the fact that Hopkins and Norton manage to show the audience that the evil genius Dr Lecter knows Graham is about to finger Lecter in the case on which they had been collaborating, even though Graham himself has no such awareness. 

That scene set the table beautifully, and provided us with some background in a very interesting way, which allowed us no understand viscerally why Graham feared Lecter, not just because we heard him or Lecter say so, but because we saw Lecter's destructive power with our own eyes, and felt what Graham felt.

Manhunter is a terrific movie, but it is more about style and atmosphere than narrative. To be more precise, it is more about Michael Mann than it is about Hannibal Lecter and the Red Dragon. Every scene drips with the kind of stylistic touches that mark Mann's work: the single musical chord dying out in the background, the layered staircases, the rock score, the ominous and hollow line delivery, the unexpected feeling of solitude in a crowded urban area. It might easily be a big screen version of Miami Vice. Dr Lecter's cell, for example, is all white and brightly-lit, and his clothing is white, allowing the few colored elements on screen to pop to our attention.  It's as if he were imprisoned in the Art Deco district. There are very few items to be seen anywhere. Rooms, even streets, tend to be empty except for a few key items which are necessary for the plot and visual impact. The staging is minimalist. The acting from Agent Graham is intense and unsmiling. He is a man carrying the world on his shoulders.

Red Dragon's director, Brett Ratner, went about things in a completely different way. He allowed visual imagination from his design people, but he tried for a more realistic approach except for Lecter's prison cell, the medieval design of which was dictated by Silence of the Lambs. Rooms are decorated to look the way they might really have looked, not to create a certain style. The background music stayed out of the way as much as possible. Agent Graham acted less like a man carrying the world than just a nice guy who couldn't turn down a distasteful assignment. Edward Norton's greatest skill as an actor is to make you believe that he could be one of us, a real person, in a larger than life situation. Manhunter's William Peterson approached Agent Graham with more of the earnest purposefulness of an expressionistic character icon. Peterson was a cop with a grave responsibility. Norton was our next door neighbor who just happened to be a cop with a grave responsibility.

Ratner came up with a truly exceptional cast. In addition to Hopkins and Norton, he landed Ralph Fiennes as the other lead (who is better at playing a disturbed humorless personality?). The small roles are filled out by such stalwarts as Harvey Keitel, Emily Watson, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, all of whom deliver as close to perfection as is possible in this imperfect world.

Red Dragon is a terrific, underrated film. Silence of the Lambs won a bunch of award-season hardware, and is currently rated #22 of all time at IMDb. Red Dragon won no major awards, but is nearly as good, and is better in some ways. Manhunter is also acclaimed by many, yet Red Dragon is riveting even if you know the Manhunter story by heart. I saw Red Dragon in the theatrical release, and I have watched Manhunter three times, including last night. Yet I still watched Red Dragon frame by frame last night, enjoying it as much as I did the first time, admiring the skillful management of tension and the characterizations. It is the work of genre masters at the top of their game.