because you can't have too much entertainment... October 2002

Red Dragon
Dir: Brett Ratner. Starring: Ed Norton, Anthony Hopkins, Emily Watson, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Mary Louise Parker and Ralph Fiennes.

If one were to create a recipe for FEAR, a good healthy spoonful of "the unknown" would place high on the list of ingredients. So, unfortunately for the makers of Red Dragon, this recipe was always going to be tough to pull off. The most it might hope for is some unexpected flavor. After all, at this point in time, Dr. Hannibal Lecter has become the new Darth Vader of pop culture. While he was initially frightening, he's now far too familiar to inspire anything so energizing as fear. The cannibal is now more fit for the peal of giggles that follow a surprise "BOO!" for your trick- or-treating audience. With our hero...er, the infamous villian, out of the picture as far as scares go, the audience must rely on the inspiration of the filmmakers and the new and less familiar characters for any thrills that will presumably follow.

Unfortunately, Red Dragon seems to suffer in the imagination area. Here we have the same art-directed dilapadated house in which reside all scary killers. The same baroque musical scoring to accompany all moments of violent terror. (Has there been any innovation in horror scoring since Bernard Hermann?) The same lazy, telling reliance on anti-intellectualism that seems to be part and parcel of the American obssession with the mythology of serial killers. Never mind that statistics on real-life serial killers don't seem to back this up - we presumably like our monsters with doctoral theses in hand, and classical music playing in the background. Perhaps the whole serial killer genre is now too much like Hannibal himself; too predictable and too conventional for true terror to emerge. The filmmaking team never colors outside the lines.

The singular lack of inspiration is perhaps most evident in the screenplay and direction. They rely, structurally speaking, heavily on the famous Silence of the Lambs predecessor. The push and pull of the FBI agent interviewing the killer behind glass just doesn't have the same electric ---what will they say next?---spark that it did a decade earlier. "Quid pro quo", no longer fills the screen space with a palpable sense of "what's next?" And the one true chance to thrill us anew is also blown: Upon our first meeting with Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes), we know exactly what his issues are (we hear them in voiceover) and exactly what he does to people (the hero tells us) and presumably when he will do it again. Though it may seem like common sense to the viewer, the film doesn't seem to understand that 'Fear of the Known' just doesn't work the same terrifying voodoo as 'Fear of the Unknown'.

Despite the flaws and lack of creative sizzle, Red Dragon is not without its thrills. They're just of the competent by-the-numbers variety. For those in the audience who haven't read the books or seen the original Manhunter film (that would include myself) there's a mildly intriguing story we haven't seen before with adequate to good performances from a still startling array of acclaimed actors. Presumably most of them are out for paychecks to subsidize their less crowd friendly cinematic efforts. Thankfully, for them and us, there are a few entertaining jumps and jolts along the well travelled way. Though the heartbeat unfortunately never quickens, the time with this thriller passes quickly enough.

-Nathaniel

Missed some reviews or commentary? Go here