*** (out of ****)
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Emily Watson, Mary-Louise Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffmann, Bill Duke, and Anthony Heald
Directed by Brett Ratner & written for the screen by Ted Tally, from the novel by Thomas Harris
2002 R
Let’s review, because all this is important: novelist Thomas Harris has written three novels about Dr. Hannibal Lecter, a fictional psychiatrist, serial killer, and cannibal. The first novel, titled “Red Dragon,” was put to film in 1986 by Michael Mann and renamed “Manhunter” to avoid the sting of “Year of the Dragon,” a somewhat infamous thriller that was released earlier that year. “Manhunter” tells the story of the FBI agent who, after catching Lecter (here spelled Lektor and played by Brian Cox), turns to him for advice in catching another serial killer. Although a cult favorite, with its intensely-stylized pace, images, and performances, the film was not a huge commercial success and stands alone with no need for a sequel.
Next Harris wrote “The Silence of the Lambs,” with a nearly identical plot but different particulars: a new serial killer is on the loose and, instead of the hardened agent who caught Lecter coming to him for advice, a vulnerable and awkward FBI trainee. In summary form “Silence” doesn’t seem so much like a sequel as a revision, but if Hitchcock could make an entire career out of the Innocent Man Wrongly Accused, and if Bougereau could use the exact same expression in every single one of his paintings, and if Vivaldi could write 500 concerti that are all basically the same—well, Harris can stick with the same plot. The film adaptation of “Silence” by director Jonathan Demme and screenwriter Ted Tally was also intended to stand alone, with no references to “Red Dragon” or “Manhunter.” “Silence” features an entirely different cast and crew, starring Jodie Foster as the FBI trainee and replacing Brian Cox with Anthony Hopkins. It was an enormous commercial and critical success, winning Oscars for picture, director, screenplay, actor, and actress, and frequently ranking alongside Fritz Lang’s “M,” but behind Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” among the best movies ever made about insane murderers.
Harris, who has incidentally never seen any of these films, followed “Silence” with “Hannibal,” which was brought to the screen as an intentional sequel by director Ridley Scott. While stylish, marvelously acted, sumptuously photographed, and technically well-crafted, “Hannibal” is simply too excessive. In place of the tight narratives and off-camera dread of the unknown that characterized its two predecessors, “Hannibal” sports a looser story in which the first half is inconsequential to the second, and suspense is replaced by gore. The failing is in the story itself, in which Hannibal the Cannibal is on the loose again, and Harris, Scott, and the screenwriters aren’t quite able to make Hannibal on the loose as scary as “Manhunter” and “Silence” suggest it would be. Then again, nothing short of the devil himself would be as scary as what “Manhunter” and “Silence” suggested.
Finally we come to the new film “Red Dragon,” the second adaptation of the novel that spawned “Manhunter,” this time intended as part of the Hopkins-as-Lecter series. Except for its climax, “Red Dragon” plays like a version of “Manhunter” cleaned up to go to the prom and given contact lenses instead of eyeglasses. There’s a temptation to call “Red Dragon” “Manhunter Commercialized,” but that has the wrong connotation, because I really admire and enjoyed the movie. It certainly marks the Lecter franchise getting back on track after the excesses of “Hannibal.”
“Red Dragon” is more mainstream than Mann’s “Manhunter:” the women are all prettier, the families are all more openly affectionate, the children are cuter, the gore is more intense, the killer’s love interest is less of a slut, and the detective’s obsession is less manic. “Red Dragon” uses more common framing, editing, and color-scheme, and does not share Mann’s obsession with saturating us with his locations. Freed from Mann’s love of atmosphere, “Red Dragon” also moves at a quicker pace, cues our emotions with Danny Elfman’s very-Hollywood orchestral score, and doesn’t feature the dozens of product placements that “Manhunter” needed to fit within its relatively small budget.