"Red Dragon"

Anthony Hopkins? Big deal! We've already seen the prequel to "The Silence of the Lambs" and "Hannibal" -- and it was better the first time.

By Stephanie Zacharek

Oct 4, 2002 | Very early in "Red Dragon," Brett Ratner's spit-polished and spanking-new adaptation of Thomas Harris' early '80s bestseller of the same name, forensic psychiatrist, patron of the arts and as yet unconvicted cannibal serial killer Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) stages a little dinner party for his friends on the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra board. The guests don't yet know that the tenderloin glistening so delectably on their plates used to belong to one of their own musicians, who has mysteriously gone missing.

"These little soirees of yours are always the highlight of the year!" says one guest with a hammy twinkle as Lecter gazes with benevolent condescension at his highfalutin guests. The scene is a flashback to the '80s, and we note that Lecter is wearing what's left of his hair in one of those little ponytails that protrude from the back of the head like stubborn dried-out paintbrushes. Ah, the banality of evil! Even its hair doesn't always behave.

But then, especially as Hopkins has shaped him -- first in Jonathan Demme's "Silence of the Lambs" and later in Ridley Scott's "Hannibal" -- Hannibal Lecter isn't your garden-variety mullet-wearing serial killer. He's a man of taste and refinement, the kind of guy who probably has little gold fox heads on his slippers. How astonishing, then, that he could actually kill a man, much less eat one! You usually just don't see that sort of thing on the East Coast. This is complexity with a capital C, a kind of wit and intelligence that must be admired and, even though it's clear Hannibal's loco in the coconut, revered. To telegraph Lecter's coldness, Hopkins reaches into his pocketful of patented grade-A actors' techniques (a subtle twitching of the lips, a knowingly raised eyebrow). Yet it's a coldness that lurks in the heart of everyman: With a shiver, we watch his performances and say, "There but for the grace of God, and that excellent guidance counselor at Choate, go I."

If you buy the overprocessed headcheese of the serial killer as refined genius, you'll love "Red Dragon." Or maybe not. Even Hannibal Lecter devotees may lose patience with this picture's grandiose, self-serious ponderousness -- that's Lecterese for, "It's kind of boring in patches, actually."

"Red Dragon" -- a prequel of sorts to "The Silence of the Lambs," telling the story of yet another detective who's forced to call on Hannibal Lecter for advice -- isn't particularly graphic, though at times it's mightily unpleasant. There's not a lot of gore, but we don't make it out of the theater without seeing a healthy number of grisly forensic photographs, including some of corpses whose bloodied eyes have been replaced by shards of mirror. They're shock-value visuals, and yet somehow they're not the sort of thing that rob you of sleep. That's probably because the air around them is so stale. There's an aura of dread and menace about "Red Dragon," but it's almost as if it's been pumped into the movie by an ionizer. Neither Ratner nor his actors -- working from a script by Ted Tally, who also wrote the screenplay for "The Silence of the Lambs" -- are any good at charging the atmosphere with true creepiness.

But you can sure see them trying. Edward Norton is Will Graham, an astute, sensitive detective who has dropped out of the business to live quietly in Florida with his wife (Mary-Louise Parker) and child. It was capturing Hannibal, years earlier, that did him in: Apparently, he identified too closely with the mad genius, which landed him, temporarily, in the loony bin.

But now his old boss, Jack Crawford (Harvey Keitel) is after him to chase down one last serial killer: Someone has been breaking into families' homes, killing every member (including children) mercilessly, and lavishing special attention on the ladies of the house. Graham reluctantly enlists Lecter's aid in tracking down the murderer.

We know who the killer is long before Graham does, of course: It's Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes), your friendly neighborhood mild-mannered impotent psychotic with a harelip, who has become obsessed with a William Blake painting to the point of desiring to become one with it. Thanks to Ratner's extra-subtle storytelling techniques, we know exactly how this living piece of trompe l'oeil became a killer in the first place. A hokey voiceover flashback tells us that Francis suffered severe emotional and physical abuse at the hands of the crazed granny who raised him. For those who have difficulty decoding such fine-grained psychoanalysis, Graham puts it this way: "He wasn't born a monster. He was made one through years and years of abuse."

It must have been exceptionally terrible abuse to turn poor Francis into a socially challenged zombie who intones lines like "I am the dragon and you call me insane!" So what's Fiennes' excuse? He paces through the movie like a silent-film ham, making his eyes look really shiny and crazy whenever it's called for, which is basically every time he's on-screen. Did someone forget to tell him "Red Dragon" is a talkie? This isn't a secret psychotic who walks silently among us, blending into the background like a ghost; this is the kind of guy no one wants to sit next to on the bus.

Nevertheless, it takes Graham the whole movie to catch him, and Norton plods along dutifully for the ride. Norton has been a terrific actor in pictures like 1996's "Primal Fear," his debut. But his performances over the past few years have had a rote, perfunctory quality, and "Red Dragon" is a prime example. He delivers his lines like a guy who sure knows how to deliver lines -- he hits them like a tennis pro idly whacking a ball against the wall over and over again. They make contact; they just don't whirr or sting.

Next Page: Anthony Hopkins: Bette Davis in drag?

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