Red Dragon
Directed by Brett Ratner
Written by Ted Tally
Starring Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton
Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel
Classification: AA
Rating: **½
For most moviegoers, including all of us put off our feed by Anthony Hopkins, there will just be a single point of comparison here: How does Red Dragon stack up in the Hannibal Lecter saga, the McScare franchise that began with The Silence of the Lambs and continued with Hannibal and now resumes again? Well, that answer is easy: It's a whole lot better than the risible second and not nearly as good as the memorable original.
However, there's another comparative standard available in this case -- more significant and, ultimately, more instructive. But let's save that discussion for a minute.
First, the flick at hand. Actually, it's a sort of prequel based on an earlier Thomas Harris novel of the same title, one that picks up the Lecter chronicle at the point of his initial capture by a shrewd if oversensitive G-man.
Now take a quick glance at the assembled talent and all the signs look favourable -- we seem to be in for a primo piece of fright-mongering. Why? Because Ted Tally, who wrote the screenplay for Silence, returned to do this adaptation. And the cast is dazzling: Hopkins, of course, back to tempt our taste buds; Edward Norton as the dogged FBI agent; Harvey Keitel as his trusty colleague; and Ralph Fiennes as the de rigueur serial killer on the loose, a psycho who bloodies entire families by the cycle of the full moon. That's quite the stellar quartet, with Fiennes as the real bonus -- as he so ably proved in Schindler's List, this is a guy who knows his way around a villain. You may have noticed, however, an omission from this imposing list of principals -- the little matter of the director. Who is he? Brett Ratner, whose credits fall a tad short of Wellesian, unless you detected auteur genius in Rush Hour and Rush Hour 2. In theory, then, his presence sounds the one inauspicious note in the project. In practice, alas, it gets worse: His presence is so pedestrian as to seem like an absence, and single-handedly transforms a potentially good film into a merely average one. Speaking of Orson Welles, he once claimed that there are many working Hollywood directors, some with celebrated careers, who are essentially useless, capable of little more than surrounding themselves with professionals and yelling "Action." Lacking any singular expertise of their own, they're content to let the screenwriter write, the actors act, the cinematographer shoot, and the editor edit. In other words, they bring nothing to the table that isn't already there. On the evidence here, Ratner can sit down and be counted on Welles's blacklist.
Consider what he does with the glittering cast -- zilch. With one exception, the performances are certainly accomplished, yet no one truly shines, not even Fiennes. The unhappy exception is Hopkins who, in Ratner's defence, may well be undirectable in this role at this stage. Back when he introduced Lecter in Silence, his portrayal deliciously reversed the movie-monster norm. Typically, from Nosferatuto King Kong, monsters are demonic on the outside and only hint at the humanity within. Hopkins's Lecter did just the opposite, hiding the primitive creature behind a mask of human civility, the cannibal behind the chianti.
But that was then. By now, his Hannibal has become an icon hardwired into the pop psyche and Hopkins can't help playing him awfully close to parody -- the stare magnified, the lisp accentuated, a cartoon creep in a padded cell. Having lost his power to frighten, he settles for inadvertent chuckles, but the joke is on the film. Whenever Ratner cuts away from the chase for the killer to insert the Lecter scenes, all the suspense goes right out of the picture. In this genre, you're supposed to laugh after you're scared, not before.
Okay, it's time for that more instructive comparison I mentioned earlier. Red Dragon was adapted once before, in 1986, under the title of Manhunter and the auspices of an infinitely superior director -- Michael Mann. How did Mann treat the novel? First, unlike Tally, he was wise enough to rid his script of Harris's lame attempts to psychoanalyze the killer -- gee, the poor kid was a bed-wetter with a mean Granny. Second, and far more important, he served up the material as a smart policier, tautly with an acute sense of rhythm and an imaginative use of composition.
Although rhythm and composition are basic elements of film grammar, it's astonishing how few directors possess any feel for them. Clearly, they're beyond Ratner's grasp. If you doubt that, watch this film, then rent the video of Mann's version, and compare just a single sequence. Focus on the one where the killer allows himself to be seduced by the sensitive charms of a blind woman, and feels a deep fear on two counts -- that his inner monster will be tamed, and that it won't. Watch how Mann dramatizes that fear -- through a pure piece of composition; a postcoital tableau, silent yet haunting, that sees the killer placing the sleeping woman's hand over his horrified face. In plodding contrast, Ratner relies on stilted dialogue to explain the same conflicting emotion, and finds no visual equivalent -- he doesn't even bother to look.
Says our devil Hannibal in the final frames: "We live in a primitive time." Not so, but our time is plagued with primitive directors toiling in the name of entertainment, and protected by an industry that rewards competence over excellence. They're the reason why this movie is simply average, and why all the Red Dragons look so uniformly beige.