Audiences waited ten years for the return of Hannibal Lecter and Clarice Starling, and so the hype for the third (or first)
film was a little more muted than
Hannibal. Late in 2000 and early in 2001, I was looking forward to
Hannibal, but not nearly as much as some people because I had read the book, and frankly, the book sucked. With
Red Dragon, the relative prequel to the Oscar-winning
The Silence of the Lambs, I knew two things: It was going to be better than
Hannibal, and a whole lot better than that 1986 piece-of-trash
Manhunter.
Red Dragon is of course based on the book of the same title by Thomas Harris, the man who invented the most infamous and marketable serial killer of them all. Red Dragon is also a remake of a Michael Mann (The Insider) film called Manhunter. Granted, Red Dragon Brett Ratner says that his version is more true to the book and is not really a remake of Manhunter, but it is. Manhunter had the same story and the same characters; Red Dragon puts new actors in and there we go. It''s a remake, Brett. Get over it. Anyway, Manhunter was God-awful. Some critics think it is spectacular for some reason, but to any normal moviegoer that has actually seen this forgotten film, it is a piece-of-crap that should be burned upon sight. It was boring, slow and a little psychedlic; who knows, perhaps Mann was on drugs while he was filming it.
Thankfully, Red Dragon is much, much better. Finally, audiences are allowed to see the capture of Hannibal Lecter, and then we go on from there as former FBI Agent Will Graham returns to hunt down The Tooth Fairy. Ratner is smart in avoiding the onslaught of gore that drove so many people away from Hannibal, but does not censor them either. We are given many disturbing and very sad images of a family - including children - butchered, their eyes replaced with mirrors. In this sense, Red Dragon has a feel similar to Seven, where there is something dark and horrifying going on behind the scenes; in Hannibal, that element was lost.