Overall Rating
  Awesome: 24.19%
Worth A Look: 39.52%
Average: 14.52%
Pretty Bad: 4.03%
Total Crap: 17.74%
8 reviews, 76 user ratings
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| Red Dragon |
by Erik Childress
"Brett Ratner's Gus Van Sant's Manhunter Redux"
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In the continuing effort of Hollywood taking great films and mucking them up with a modern version comes perhaps the quickest turnaround for an American title. We take smelly foreign films all the time and clean ‘em up by removing subtitles with English speakers, but us crude Americans also take genuine classics and add color and modern players making an inferior product using name recognition to make a lot of cash. Yes, Dino de Laurentiis, I’m looking at you.In 1986, he produced Michael Mann’s Manhunter, an adaptation of Thomas Harris’ novel Red Dragon. Critically acclaimed, but not much of a success at the time, it would go on to become known as the original Hannibal Lecter movie before Anthony Hopkins popularized and won an Oscar for the role in 1991’s The Silence of the Lambs. Ol’ Dino dumped Lecter after the red ink of the ’86 production. Realizing he lost a cash cow he could sink his teeth into, Dino got the rights back for 2001’s Hannibal, which lost Jodie Foster in favor of Julianne Moore. $150 million later, Dino convinces Hopkins to reprise the role one last time to complete the trilogy. Poor Brian Cox. I wonder how he feels after seeing this because I wanted to find director Brett Ratner and kick the shit out of him.
What is the point? That’s the question I ask. What is the point of making this film other than money? What’s the point of me writing a review when other than the cast list, I might as well be describing the plot of Manhunter? It’s not exactly shot-for-shot nor beat-for-beat, but this is Manhunter Redux made as a convenience for those who never saw or heard of the original. That’s all it is.
Since all this already happened, I’ll remind rather than inform. Once again, Will Graham (Edward Norton/originally CSI’s William Petersen), is called out of retirement to hunt down serial killer, Francis “Tooth Fairy” Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes/originally Tom Noonan). Graham went a little mad sometime after capturing Lecter, a trait explored through conversation and Petersen’s intense performance in the original but reduced to a newspaper clipping here. Norton’s stoic performance in the film, especially in the scenes between him and Lecter can’t hold a candle to watching Petersen attempt to keep Lecter out of his head
Don’t call him Francis, call him psycho-Dolarhyde takes an interest in fellow vidlab employee, the blind Reba (Emily Watson/originally Joan Allen) not as a victim but as someone he can love; someone who can’t see his ugliness. This storyline has been beefed up a bit and it’s the only part everyone gets right, thanks in no small part to the best performances in the film from Watson and Fiennes. Since the investigation is no different than the original film and frankly puts us to sleep, why not be daring and tell this story from Dolarhyde’s point of view? Because that would mean that Ratner was actually trying to do something.
Other than the giant tattoo and a different opening and ending, all the big money shots of Manhunter are in Red Dragon, yet Ratner and screenwriter Ted Tally (who also adapted and won the Oscar for 91’s Lambs) by solely concentrating on the investigation and discarding much of Graham’s homelife have managed to whittle the suspense down to absolute zero. This is more like Brett Ratner’s Gus Van Sant’s Manhunter. Scenes are the same, even dialogue is word for word (right down to a “you’re so sly, but so am I” in the same scene with practically the same shot.) By adding Lecter’s capture, the dialogue in the first prison interview between Lecter and Graham now makes no sense. Lecter wonders how Graham caught him and Graham tells him he had disadvantages because he’s insane. Well, not according to what we see which consists of Graham literally stumbling onto Lecter’s crimes and at the moment of discovery is immediately stabbed for his efforts. Where does Lecter’s question come from and how can Graham sit there and act like he single-handedly uncovered the crime of the century? This is a stunningly inept accomplishment.
Ratner’s use of suspense consists of cheap scares like an introspective moment interrupted by a squealing flashframe flashback, cliched crashing thunder and a helicopter appearing out of nowhere. You know, those pesky choppers that pop-in from other dimensions. If Ratner thinks using Hopkins’ Lecter will produce instanteneous willies, think again, Brett. It’s too late. His time has come and gone. He may have been recently voted the second greatest villain of all time by the Online Film Critics Society, but in Hannibal and now this, he’s a party joke; a dermatologist’s Freddy Krueger of the franchise’s tailend when quips took the place of quivers. Where once a look or a speech pattern could stand our hairs on end, his “becoming” is now that of Donald Sutherland in Backdraft.
Despite all the hype to bring the Hannibal Lecter trilogy full circle, one must be readily knowledgeable that his role in this story is of a mere supporting player. With the exception of starting the film with Lecter’s capture, his three other scenes had to be supplemented with an inexplicable cell dining sequence intercut with the action we should be following, just to give the character more screen time.How come the ads don’t read (cue scary trailer voice) “From the director of The Family Man and Money Talks comes the first chapter in terror?” If its not about money and purely a desire to connect all the dots in the Lecter trilogy, than why not get Scott Glenn back as Jack Crawford instead of Harvey Keitel? You got your prize in Hopkins and even snagged Anthony Heald (Dr. Chilton) and Frankie Faison (Barney)? Poor Scott Glenn and poor Frankie Faison and more importantly, poor you if you waste your money on Red Dragon. Take $3.00 instead and rent Manhunter.
link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=6176&reviewer=198
originally posted: 10/11/02 16:16:00
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USA
04-Oct-2002 (R)
UK
N/A
Australia
24-Oct-2002
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