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Red Dragon
**
Cinema Releases - October 11, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate 15. USA.
124 minutes. Directed by Brett Ratner. Written by Ted Tally; from the novel
by Thomas Harris. Starring Edward Norton, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Fiennes,
Harvey Keitel, Emily Watson, Mary-Louise Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman,
Anthony Heald, Frankie Faison.
We all know that the reason for making "Red
Dragon" was the novelty of Anthony Hopkins playing Hannibal Lecter
for a third time. The first book in Thomas Harris's trilogy was already filmed
well enough in Michael Mann's "Manhunter" (1986), and if a Hopkins version
cried out to be made, we would have gotten it before the great "Silence of
the Lambs" or that unfortunate sequel named "Hannibal". The steam was running
out of this series by the second half of the second movie.
Nonetheless, I marched into "Red Dragon" determined
to have a good time. Unphased was I by the hiring of director Brett Ratner,
who made the frivolous "Rush Hour" pictures and the lame Nicolas Cage weepie
"Family Man". And I shrugged off the thought that Anthony Hopkins might not
pull off the challenge of looking younger than he did when first playing
this role. You never know when a film is going to jump up and surprise you,
or at least be a triumph of style over substance.
Indeed, "Red Dragon" starts off strongly enough:
Dr. Hannibal Lecter, cannibal, prisoner and suave escapee, with his balance
of charm and terror, is one of the most popular screen icons of recent decades.
It is good to meet him again. He is seen in gorgeous Dante Spinotti
cinematography, full of rich colours and deep, absorbing contrasts. And as
the story unfolds, we're treated to a cast including Edward Norton, Harvey
Keitel, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, Mary-Louise Parker and Philip Seymour
Hoffman. These are the kinds of actors whose presences make film fans get
involuntary chills of excitement.
Norton plays former FBI agent Will Graham, the
guy who caught Lecter and ended up taking early retirement after emotional
draining and physical scars. As the story begins, the cop is being convinced
to help with one more case, involving the Tooth Fairy, a serial killer who
does unspeakable things to the eyes of his victims and uses jagged false
teeth to bite into flesh.
Of course, this protagonist needs to pick the
brain (only a figure of speech, "Hannibal" fans) of Dr. Lecter if he is to
get anywhere in solving the new murders, so Norton visits Hopkins's cell,
to trade opinions of the case file and engage in conversations that form
psychological chess games.
That's what the conversation is supposed to do,
anyway. "Red Dragon" shows its first signs of failure in the places where
"Silence of the Lambs" made its impact; the scenes involving Lecter in prison
are ridiculous, because the Hopkins character is too out of control, and
Norton never appears to be undermined. Hopkins has said that he tried to
up the stakes this time round, and make his role more menacing, but instead
he seems forced, as he plunges his head forward, snarls and raises his voice
too high. Even the makeup is wrong: Hannibal now looks like a drag queen,
with a face full of foundation and too much shadow around the
eyes.
"Red Dragon" also does far too much meandering
for us to become involved. Lecter's scenes bookend the picture, and yet his
role in the main content remains as minor as it did in the source material.
The scenes involving Fiennes, as the Tooth Fairy, and Watson, as a blind
woman with whom he falls in love, are hard to follow because they're so varying
in quality. There's one particularly effective scene on a couch, where Watson
attempts to snuggle with her lover, Fiennes attempts to pacify her while
concentrating on a videotape of a family he is stalking, and all sorts of
tensions are brought together. Most of the other moments with these characters
have Fiennes wandering around trying to look weird and distanced, intercut
with odd close-ups of Watson's face as she bulges her eyes and attempts to
convince the camera that she really is visually impaired.
Norton does his best in the lead role, but he's
a great young actor, and needs something more substantial than the bland
police procedural details this screenplay makes him recite. He and Keitel
are constantly passing around bits of paper, talking real fast, piecing together
clues and barking down the phone for test results, and none of it means anything.
You could replace all the nouns in these scenes and remain unaware of the
difference; the message is that the cops are piecing the puzzle together,
and the filmmakers are hoping that it'll all seem real smart while the details
go over our heads.
I'm not one of those guys who go on about the
greatness of "Manhunter", or how superior the understated work of Brian Cox
was compared to the theatrics of Anthony Hopkins, but watching "Red Dragon"
helped me realise what a good piece of work the 1986 movie was. There are
clichés in every cop film, but "Manhunter" was one that kept them
invisible: William Petersen, as the detective, was in extreme torment about
having to leave his family and solve crimes, and while the photography in
that movie was also by Dante Spinotti, it was more than simply pretty. The
cinematographer had a strong directorial vision to work with; he made daylight
seem unnecessarily penetrating, night time a mass of harsh and sickly neon.
Norton plays an unhappy man, but not a tortured one; he's just that old,
reliable character of the cop who comes out of retirement for one last
case.
What's remarkable is that even after all the
imitations, parodies and spin-offs, "The Silence of the Lambs" still plays
like a fresh and wonderful film. When its camera tracks to Anthony Hopkins,
and we get our first glimpse of Hannibal the Cannibal, it is still possible
to feel the chills audiences got in 1991. "Red Dragon" offers not a shred
of that, and is a mess in its own right anyway, but we can't work up enough
passion to let it ruin greatness.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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