A Serial-Killer Who Just Won't Go Away

In Red Dragon, the new Hannibal Lecter thriller that precedes The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal, FBI Agent Will Graham (Edward Norton) is after an evil psychotic murderer known as the Tooth Fairy, one Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes). Dolarhyde murders whole families and places mirror shards in their eye sockets; he also has the unpleasant habit of biting people with his dead grandmother's dentures. All this because he wet the bed too much as a child, or so the film would have us believe; grandma was also a castrating harpy, and there's some business involving a William Blake print in the attic. Dolarhyde's real problem, we can surmise, is his loneliness; his murderous impulses are softened by the affections of a blind girl (Emily Watson) who just thinks he's "different." Graham, meanwhile, has to seek help from Dr. Lecter, his old nemesis, while fretting over his own family's safety; Lecter and Dolarhyde are pen pals, and Lecter has an ax to grind.

Red Dragon is a strange movie; it's about psychopaths, but it's also a nostalgic piece. Silence is a crowd favorite; Hannibal is not.

If you yearn for the good old days when Lecter was still in his moldy cell, you should be pleased as punch by the efforts made here: every detail has been carefully restored, down to his Duomo sketch. Even Dr. Frederick Chilton (Anthony Heald) has been reinstated. He is, of course, headed for Lecter's gastrointestinal tract; that's as close as this story comes to black humor.

Unlike Hannibal, which presents its villains as ghoulish cartoons, Red Dragon takes its psychos in earnest--lest one forget, its credit sequence is cribbed from Se7en. But there's more to that pervasive sense of déjà vu; this is a remake of the earliest Lecter adaptation, Michael Mann's strangely forgotten Manhunter (1986), which starred the great Brian Cox as Hannibal and the not-so-great William L. Petersen as Graham. Mann's movie is chilly, bleak, and lonely; this one is loud, busy, and crowded. The difference is telling: Red Dragon is first and foremost a quick money-maker.

There was a 10-year lapse between Silence and Hannibal; there was a one-and-a-half-year lapse between Hannibal and this. Hannibal is still fresh in the mind, and everything in Red Dragon means to right the wrongs of its predecessor. After Hannibal's eccentricities, audiences miss the real, genuine Dr. Lecter, and Red Dragon serves him up with a minimum of fuss; it's standard-issue Hollywood product, pure and simple. The director is Brett Ratner, of Rush Hour, Rush Hour 2, and--brace yourself--Rush Hour 3, set for 2004. Needless to say, Ratner seems a bad choice for this subject; I fully expected Chris Tucker to turn up as Barney, but Frankie Faison does the honors once again (the sole veteran of every Lecter movie, he appeared in Manhunter as a police lieutenant). In a way, however, Ratner's a perfect choice: he's a dutiful servant to his producers, and he's turned in a piece of inert craftsmanship--inoffensive but dull.
Manhunter is not a great movie by any means, but it does benefit from Mann's distinct visual sensibility--his chilly abstractions are charged with a sense of emptiness and elusive, almost atmospheric, menace. Ratner's neutral approach is less unsettling, but it's also less distinctive. For all its noise--and it has noise to spare--Red Dragon is a negligible wisp of a movie. It doesn't get under you skin, and, given what it's about, it ought to.

The big cast is a surprise, but it's wasted. Hopkins is hammier than ever; he's not at all frightening, but he truly sounds like a serpent, as if he had a forked tongue. Fiennes is a great actor, but he seems unengaged--he's less disturbing than peculiar, which is all wrong. Norton is awful. And then there's Philip Seymour Hoffman as a greasy reporter; in typical fashion, his one-note schtick grates on the nerves. When he's glued to a wheelchair, set on fire, and kicked down a hill, it's a welcome sight.

If there's a reason to see this, it's Watson, a terrific actress who does well with what she's given. Her expressive babyface is good for the role; staring blankly ahead and fumbling about, she's a perfect image of innocence adrift. There's a potentially great moment when she woos Fiennes as he watches some footage of future victims. Sadly, Ratner fails to exploit the material's perversity--another sign of his indifference, I suppose--and the moment fizzles. In the case of Watson, it's nice to see that someone gives a damn.