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Red Dragon- 10/4/02 - R - 126m
Anthony Hopkins
Edward Norton
Ralph Fiennes
Director: Brett Ratner
JEF
I was very much looking forward to seeing Red Dragon. I’m a big
fan of Ed Norton, and Anthony Hopkins, and to see these two interact on
screen I was hoping would make for a great show. But… It lacked
depth in the storyline, and characters.
This movie was based on the book by Thomas Harris, which is a prequel
to “Silence of the Lambs”. It was to be our first introduction
to the famous character “Hannibal Lecter” played by Anthony
Hopkins. First made famous in the movie “Silence of the Lambs”
staring Hopkins and Jodie Foster as a strong female lead as FBI Agent
Starling.
Spoiler Warning! – The following review
will reveal the storyline of the movie, which will ruin the suspense.
The storyline:
We’re shown (briefly) the ending of how Hannibal is caught the first
time by FBI Agent Will Graham (Ed Norton). Then in a rushed sequence of
clips, Hannibal is caught and jailed, and Agent Will Graham retires from
the FBI, and is living very comfortably in Florida. But, Jack Crawford
(Harvey Keitel) who is a director in the FBI calls upon Graham to help
him profile serial killers. And with this new killer Francis Dolarhyde
(Ralph Fiennes), nicknamed the “tooth fairy”, Jack asks for
Will’s help yet again.
With lots of suspense and good twists, the movie then continues on with
the story of Will trying to get inside the mind of the “tooth fairy”
along with the help of Hannibal Lecter.
Now here’s where the movie was lacking… I thought this movie
would be about the beginnings of Hannibal, but it wasn’t. He was
just used to help Will figure out who the “Tooth fairy” was.
I felt disappointed by this. I wanted to know more about Hannibal.
Ok, I tried to get past that and let the story take its course. Who is
the Tooth Fairy, and Agent Will? But this to me was where the movie was
lacking in depth. I had many questions… Why did Agent Will quit
the FBI? They never really explained that, other than it was assumed he
quit because Hannibal almost killed him. But the movie was vague about
that. Why would Hannibal agree to help the one man who was responsible
for putting him in jail? There were some good scenes to help try and explain
this, and it was a bit like watching a chess match where Will and Hannibal
were each trying to out-think each other, but I don’t think Hannibal’s
motives were explained enough. Why would Agent Will be talked back into
helping Jack Crawford solve this case by dealing with the one man responsible
for his quitting the FBI in the first place? Oh to help the possible future
victims… then why did he quit the FBI in the first place?
The Character of the Tooth fairy was a potentially interesting character.
But again there were too many holes in explaining who he was, or how he
became so twisted. We’re given one scene to explain this, which
was from a verbally abusive grandmother. One Line! One line to explain
this complex character! The movie was called “Red Dragon”
because Francis was drawn to a painting by William Blake. Why? I don’t
think that was explained at all. Francis obviously had deep-rooted mental
problems, but we don’t know anything about him. He had problems
with his face that was not explained in the movie. At one point he was
supposed to have had corrective surgery, but why? What was wrong with
his face to have needed surgery, was it just a scar on his lip that made
him hate his face so much? And what was his motivation for killing? It
wasn’t explained at all.
And finally, the ending was transparent to me. Although the guy sitting
behind us was totally surprised. He felt the need to say this out loud
for us all to hear.
I don’t mean this to sound like such a negative review. It was a
scary, suspenseful movie. All the actors did well. Fiennes did a terrific
job of playing the serial killer. I did expected more from Ed Norton.
Anthony Hopkins did very well with bringing the fear and intelligence
to Hannibal. If you’re a fan of the other two Hannibal movies, then
you have to go see this. If you are a fan of these actors I’d recommend
it. But due to the many questions I had about the underlying motives of
the characters and holes in the storyline, I was disappointed. Perhaps
this is one of those movies where the book is much better.
Also I’d like to commend Philip Seymour Hoffman, on his acting.
He played a sleazy tabloid reporter, Freddy Lounds and was terrific. He’s
always excellent in portraying a believable character in all his movies.
Jef