RED DRAGON Review

I saw RED DRAGON as the closing night film of Sitges with Dino De Laurentis and Martha De Laurentis and Anthony Hopkins and Brett Ratner and Ralph Fiennes sitting directly behind Father Geek and I on Jury Row. Before the film was a huge celebration of Dino's career from La Strada to his recent Lecter outings and as I sat there watching clips from BARBARELLA, WAR AND PEACE, the Fellini films, FLASH GORDON, the Kong remake and on and on and on... I just couldn't help but get giddy. I mean, right behind me was the man that produced CONAN THE BARBARIAN.... which was shot in SPAIN, where I was!!! Literally I began having geek attacks. After an hour and a half long ceremony or so, the movie finally began. The script was once brilliant... what would Ratner do to it?

RED DRAGON does exactly what it set out to do… it starts off the Hopkins/Lecter trilogy with an adequate setup to lead into SILENCE OF THE LAMBS.

It isn’t as great a work of original cinema as Michael Mann’s MANHUNTER, nor is it the precision work of tension that was Jonathan Demme’s SILENCE OF THE LAMBS… and still it isn’t the epic Grand Guignol Gothic Romance of Ridley Scott’s HANNIBAL. It is actually the most pedestrian of all the Thomas Harris LECTER WORKS – but in a way that’s exactly what it should have been to open the Hopkins series.

Once you have all three films on DVD you can put in RED DRAGON, be impressed with Ralph Fiennes’ amazing work, along with the brilliance that is Emily Watson. You can watch Hopkins seemingly sleepwalk through the film. You can be stunned at how utterly uninvolving a performance that Ratner coaxed out of normally brilliant actor Ed Norton, with the noted exception of his final showdown with Fiennes… but was that really Ratner’s doing or Norton raising his game in a scene opposite Fiennes? Hmmmm…

It has been noted in the press that Ratner took this film to have a high profile pay day and to begin to shift from being that “RUSH HOUR” guy. Wanting to change directions as a filmmaker is noble, however having a legitimate passion for the material is also needed, and the lack of passion is notable in this film. The film is exactly what it set out to be… a by the numbers cleanly and soberly directed stylistically vapid safe telling of RED DRAGON.

Here you won’t see the ‘Dragon’ placing shards of mirror into eye sockets… You won’t see reflections of the ‘Dragon’ raping the bleeding near death corpses of the women, nor the reflections of his actions in the eyes of the children and the father. You won’t see the ‘Dragon’ kill the household pets. Matter of fact, you won’t see the ‘Dragon’ actually do anything.

Like I said, this is an extremely sanitary film about grisly things. After the wild trip that Ridley Scott took us on in HANNIBAL, this has that same ‘Safeness’ feeling that you got when you saw Schumacher’s BATMAN FOREVER… The film that pulled back the edge from BATMAN RETURNS and steered us towards the eventual train wreck that was BATMAN & ROBIN.

Now there is only one reason to see this film in theaters and that’s to watch Ralph Fiennes and Emily Watson. Those two actors are actually in a better film than the rest of the movie. Phillip Seymour Hoffman and Harvey Keitel and Anthony Hopkins and Mary-Louise Parker and Ed Norton all seem completely and utterly bored. Meanwhile Fiennes and Watson create a wonderful play on the work of O.P. Heggie and Boris Karloff in THE BRIDE OF FRANKENSTEIN. Watching those two actually thrilled me throughout the film and made my time truly worthwhile.

I can imagine a few times in my life watching this film as the opening act for my Hopkins/Lecter series. It isn’t bad, it isn’t mediocre. It’s actually pretty good, but in a series known for greatness… that is a set back. I’m worried that if there are any more in the series, we might end up seeing the self-parody of other extended series continued here again. And that would be a shame.

Thinking back upon the promise of Ted Tally’s script, I can’t help but wonder what someone like John Carpenter or Tobe Hooper or Wes Craven or Brian DePalma or George Romero could have done with a script of this quality. Imagining what someone like Hideo Nakata or Guillermo Del Toro would do with it boggles the mind. People with a true passion for the genre, a true knowledge of its mechanics, as well as having the dream of realizing the potential that was there in the script.

I also missed Howard Shore’s score… or the classy ensemble musical work of Scott’s HANNIBAL. Elfman’s music really didn’t make the film feel a part of the series, instead… much as Goldenthal did with BATMAN FOREVER, it simply felt over-orchestrated. I find it terribly sad to see the shoe being on the other foot nowadays.

Passing this up in theaters for the better films out there right now like RULES OF ATTRACTION, BELOW, BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE, PUNCHDRUNK LOVE and this weekend’s THE RING is highly recommended. Save this for rental, when you can see it as part of the overall trilogy, I think it’ll actually work better then.