Red Dragon (2002) * * *

Directed by:  Brett Ratner

Starring:  Edward Norton, Anthony Hopkins, Harvey Keitel, Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson

In 1991's The Silence Of The Lambs, we are introduced to Dr. Hannibal Lecter standing alone in his prison cell.    He has a pleasant demeanor and a pleasant countenance, but of course is a serial killer who cannibalizes his victims.      He offers to help FBI agent trainee Clarice Starling catch another killer, but is he helping or manipulating her?     Plenty of both.    Red Dragon provides the backstory to show how Lecter was caught and placed in the plexiglass cell with a cobblestone wall.  

Red Dragon begins with the highly cultured Lecter attending an opera.     He has sophisticated tastes to complement his savage ones.      He may be the most mannered cannibal you will ever meet.    His duplicity is fascinating.     An FBI agent named Will Graham (Norton) is enlisting Lecter's help in tracking a serial killer.     Graham discovers that Lecter is indeed the killer he is chasing and, after a brutal, near-deadly fight, Lecter is captured.     Graham retires from the FBI, but is lured out of retirement by his former boss Jack Crawford (Keitel), who is after another serial killer nicknamed Tooth Fairy.    (Named so for biting his dead victims as a sort of homage to Lecter).

Tooth Fairy is Francis Dolarhyde (Fiennes), a man with scars on his upper lip from numerous cleft palate surgeries and scars on his psyche from years of physical and psychological abuse.     He lives in what used to be the family nursing home and believes himself to be the human incarnate of the Red Dragon from a famous painting.     Think of Norman Bates and Hannibal Lecter rolled into one (plus a grotesque back tattoo) and you have a pretty good idea of what Dolarhyde is like.    Fiennes never goes over the top, but shows us a wounded man who we would possibly feel sorry for if he didn't murder two families.  

We would be tempted to write off Dolarhyde as an insane killer, but we see a sweet, almost normal side to him when he falls for a blind woman named Reba (Watson), who in Dolarhyde's eyes has an advantage of not being able to see him.     He wants to be with her, but can not control his demons and his desire to kill.     It is too late for him to be anything else.

Dolarhyde and Lecter feel a kinship because both are at the mercy of their murderous natures.    They write cryptic messages to each other through a National Enquirer-type tabloid called The Tattler.     The messages not only profess their admiration for one another, but a more sinister scheme hatched by Lecter.     Graham reaches a dead end in his search for Tooth Fairy, so he enlists Lecter's help again from prison.     Norton, sporting blonde hair and a tan, exudes competency with a hidden fear of Lecter despite having caught him.     He does not have the same effect on Lecter that Clarice Starling does, probably because Lecter fears him in his own understated way.

Red Dragon is not a geekshow like 2001's Hannibal, which was well-made, but depressing and needlessly gory.    Director Ratner is more interested in creating suspense with an efficient police procedural.      Hopkins gets top billing, but he is not really in the film all that much.     However, his creepy presence is everywhere, even scenes he is not in.     Red Dragon is about people who act according to their natures, whether good or bad, right or wrong.     It avoids becoming a gorefest like Hannibal, while not becoming a Silence retread, even though its story takes place before Clarice Starling ever decided to give the FBI a try.