Red Dragon (2002)

Director: Brett Ratner

Starring: Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Ralph Fiennes, Harvey Keitel, Emily Watson, Mary-Louise Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Anthonly Heald

More info: IMDb

Tagline: Before the Silence

Plot: A retired FBI agent with psychological gifts is assigned to help track down "The Tooth Fairy", a mysterious serial killer; aiding him is imprisoned criminal genius Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter.

My rating: 8/10

Will I watch it again? Yup.



After that insult that was HANNIBAL (2001) the year before, my expectations for this RD were in the fucking basement. FUCK ME SIDEWAYS this was good! I don't know how it happened but I'm glad it did. Having read the books I was very pleased that this followed the novel closely and it didn't suck. See, that's the important thing. HANNIBAL took Lecter and went into the ridiculous. This one was much closer to THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (1991) in tone than that other turd.





I liked Norton as Will Graham. He's a very good actor and I've never seen a poor performance. He did better than Peterson who had the role in MANHUNTER (1986). Norton's at least got range. It was nice to see Hopkins with a more grounded performance like in SILENCE. He was hamming it up in HANNBIAL. Ugh. I see me watching that one soon just to get it out of the way. Ralph Fiennes was fantastic. What impressed me most with the casting in this one is that the principles are played by skilled, respected actors. Good move. RED DRAGON is a very good and worthy prequel to one of the greatest serial killers of all time and that's good enough for me.