Red Dragon

Red Dragon (***1/2)

Like most who have seen it, I consider Silence of the Lambs to be one of the great all-time thrillers, and Hannibal Lecter to be one of the best all-time characters. I've never seen Ridley Scott's follow up, Hannibal, from start to finish in one sitting but, from what I've seen, I agree with what seems to be the general consensus, that it was too over-the-top and overt in comparison to its predecssor. When Hannibal is confined to a prison cell, the eloquent and supremely intelligent side of his character--the side that makes him an interesting character--is brought to the forefront. When Hannibal is allowed to roam free and is doing stuff like cooking Ray Liotta's brains while he's still sitting there with his skull split open... not as much. In this sense then, Red Dragon is a much more worthy descendant of the original Silence of the Lambs movie (although, its actually a prequel, was in fact Thomas Harris's first Lecter novel, and was adapted into a movie once in the '80s in the form of Manhunter) than Hannibal. I just picked it up off of Amazon.com, which had it for like five bucks as part of their Black Friday sale, and decided to watch it again. Seeing it for the first time in a while, there were some imperfections of it that bothered me moreso than I remember them bothering me initially, and I don't think its quite as close to being in the same realm as Silence of the Lambs as I may have thought at first. Nevertheless, its still a movie that's immensely entertaining with some excellent performances.

Chief among the reasons why the movie works is Edward Norton's performance as William Graham, a former FBI agent who went into early retirement after being the first to catch Hannibal Lecter and getting stabbed in the process. Norton speaks in the same sort of somber tone with the same emotionally drained looking expression that he had in Fight Club, juxtaposing the spasticness of Tyler Durden. Obviously, having come face-to-face with Lecter (and without plexiglass between them), Graham is less over his head and more in control than was Clariece Starling in Lambs, but Norton still plays him as sort of world-weary and forlorn as he witnesses the grizzly fate of the victims of the murderer he's persuing. The humanity in his character rings true, and the fact that he's easy to identify with and emphasize with is chief amongst the reasons why the movie is captivating.

The aforementioned killer that is to Red Dragon what Buffalo Bill was to Silence of the Lambs (though he never instructs anyone to put the lotion in the basket) is the "Tooth Fairy" played convincingly by Ralph Finnes. Like Buffalo Bill, he seems aloof, socially awkward, and terribly uncomfortable in his own body. Also like Buffalo Bill, he seems obsessed with the idea of transformation, although in his case, instead of being a transvestite, he says he's going to become "the dragon." Its never really made clear what this means (of course, being very much insane, it may not be clear what this really means to the Tooth Fairy himself), but we learn that he's obsessed with the painting of the great red dragon (which I think is actually supposed to be Satan) you see at the top of this post, and he leaves the Chinese character for dragon outside of the houses of his victims. Unlike Buffalo Bill, we actually learn bits and pieces about his past which, combined with Ralph Finnes's intense, manic-depressive performance makes his character much more pitiful, and would probably be more memorable than Buffalo Bill were it not for Bill's oft-quoted "lotion in the basket" lines. Some of the movie's best scenes detail the agony of the character as he tries to develop an actual, meaningful relationship with a sweet blind girl (Emily Watson), despite the fact that the dragon is telling him to "give her to him."

All of this is well and good, but as I mentioned the movie didn't quite resonate with me quite as profoundly as I thought it did before. There are some scenes with Hannibal Lecter that are every bit as good as the best scenes in Lambs, but there are other scenes that seem too forced, with too much of a nudge-nudge, wink-wink effect in how they reference the other Lecter films. There's a scene where Lecter's cell is being cleaned out, where we see him strapped in a straight-jacket and in his famous mussle/mask thing (what the hell do you even call it?), but it has none of the potency of the scene in Lambs where he's wheeled into a courthouse and manages to berate a judge enough to get her to demand that the guards "get this thing out of my sight!" Instead, it seems to say, "Hey, remember that other movie with this guy?! That was good, right?"

The police investigation conducted by Graham and his mentor figure of sorts who brings him out of early retirement and onto the case (played well by Harvey Keitel) is interesting to follow but doesn't really reach the climax that it seems it should. Frankly, the FBI agents don't end up accomplishing much. I'm not saying that a murder mystery in a movie always has to end like a Scooby-Doo episode where they de-mask the bad guy and all of a sudden everything tied up in a neat little package. Really, I prefer that that isn't the case. But, the agents almost seem too inept here. Their characters are clearly supposed to be good at what they do, and we don't really have a hard time accepting that (certainly not in the case of Graham because we seem him catch Hannibal f'n Lecter in the first 5 minutes), but nevertheless nothing seems to go right for them. They discover a note from Lecter to the Tooth Fairy written in code and meant for the personal ads that they decide to let run in the paper which, as it turns out, when decoded contains Graham's home address. They decide to feed a story to an annoying tabloid journalist (Phillip Seymour-Hoffman) which backfires when the Tooth Fairy abducts said journalist, forces him to watch footage of his previous murders, and sends him down the street in a wheelchair on fire. As the movie reaches its climax, they discover everything about how he chooses his victims and how he operates. They race off to save Emily Watson's character, but by the time they get there, he's already decided not to kill her, burnt the house down, and she's manged to escape by herself. There's an epilogue which is a much more direct confruntation between hero and villain, but its not as satisfying as I think it could have been.

Still, the case is fascinating to follow, even if the FBI doesn't seem particularly good at solving it, Anthony Hopkins is as good as you would expect him to be as Lecter, and Ralph Finnes does an admirable job creating a frigening yet pitiful man who doesn't want to kill but can't help but kill on account of "the dragon." A good thriller.