Red Dragon doomed from start

By Jack K. Brewster
Contributing Writer

Guess who’s back? Back again. Just when you thought he had cut off his hand and vanished into the woods for good, your favorite cannibal, Hannibal Lecter, is back on the big screen. Is this a case of Hollywood tacking on another sequel so they can squeeze every last dollar out of a dying franchise? Not exactly.

For those who don’t know, Red Dragon is actually the first in the Hannibal Lecter trilogy, and if you want proof, go check out the excellent 1986 movie Manhunter which covered the same subject matter. But after the success of 1999’s Hannibal, Hollywood just couldn’t resist going back for extra helpings.

The cast of Red Dragon, which includes Ralph Fiennes, Edward Norton, Anthony Hopkins and Harvey Keitel, along with a big budget, might make you think this film was going to be done the right way, but one look at director Brad Ratliff’s resume will tell you this film was headed for trouble.

The previous directors of the Hannibal trilogy include directors Michael Mann (The Insider, Ali), Jonathan Demme (The Silence of the Lambs, Philadelphia), and Ridley Scott (Alien, Gladiator).

Those directors have combined for more than 10 Oscar nominations, and two best picture winners in the last decade alone. Bret Ratner directed Rush Hour 2.

The subject matter of Red Dragon is tough to handle. The story involves detective Will Peterson (responsible for catching Hannibal Lecter the first time) who is asked by detective Harvey Keitel to help find a killer called the Tooth Fairy before the next lunar cycle when he’ll strike again.

The Tooth Fairy is the Red Dragon, a menacing, disturbed creature who places mirrors in his victims’ eyes and kills whole families while they watch each other die. There are many gruesome scenes, and director Ratliff, who followed some of the Manhunter movie in his script, didn’t have the courage to take the Mann approach and go for subtlety over gore. Manhunter is so tame it could be shown on TV, and yet its subtle horror is piercingly effective. Red Dragon has scenes of unspeakable gore, but after a while the images just seem repetitious and unimaginative.

After a nice beginning to the film where we see just how Hannibal was caught, the film begins to go downhill. Anthony Hopkins plays almost every scene he’s in for laughs. Ralph Fiennes, who plays the serial killer, is good, but goes psycho so quickly we see little of his private pain. Phillip Seymour Hoffman comes off well as a nosy tabloid reporter, as does Emily Watson in an under-used role as a blind woman who knows the killer personally.

But in the end, this great cast, budget and compelling subject matter is not enough. Ratliff’s leering camera, his multiple climaxes, his frequent use of gore rather than psychology, and his overall inexperience doom this project before it gets going.

Red Dragon is not a bad movie, but it’s annoying to think how good it could have been had the right director handled it.

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