Red Dragon (2002)
- written January 2004
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Jack Crawford is sending in his best man to catch a serial killer before he
kills again. But the recruit, Will Graham is retired for a reason – he can’t
take the emotional strain nor the physical vulnerabilities to his family. But
this killer, the Tooth Fairy, is biting, murdering and maiming whole families
and if Will doesn’t stop it, perhaps no one will. But to get through this,
Will may have to enlist the help of his arch-nemesis, Hannibal Lector, to do
this and once the Cannibal gets inside your head, you may end up insane.
Overall: “Manhunter” was an inferior copy of the book “Red Dragon” written by Thomas Harris. Since I gave the summary of the plot at the "“Manhunter" review, I won’t bother rewriting it. However I will say this film far exceeds ““Manhunter” is both quality & quantity. The film definitely tried to follow the book, much closer than did ““Manhunter” The producers also got a really good cast to fill the story out. 11 Oscar nominations, 1 win among the main characters. I think the movie tried to capitalize on Hopkins so much so that it added some stuff to increase screen time but I loved the beginning since we finally got to see more of Hannibal, pre-arrest. The ending was sweet though and should provide for a nice DVD one day splicing the 3 films of Hopkins together. I still thought there should have been more of Dolarhyde from the book since the book really delved into the character and this film stayed away from it. Edward Norton, although a tremendous actor, didn’t do much for his character (also poorly acted in “ManHunter”). I think that Jodie Foster did more with her character as did Scott Glenn. Harvey Keitel and Dennis Farina have had better roles in other films. Had they been replaced with homeless men off the street, the movie wouldn’t have lost much. |
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