Red Dragon (2002)

the audience applauded

Please don't spend money on this.

It's easily one of the freshest, sharpest and most enjoyable films of this year.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Actually, I think the only one that is better than Red Dragon, is the one that started it all: The Silence of the Lambs. This movie is one of my favorites, although I have to admit I like them all, even the dreaded Hannibal. Red Dragon is faithful to the novel, and once you are into the movie, you can't let it go. I know some people, mostly critics, have a thing against the director, Brett Ratner, but that is not my problem. For me, this is the one. Even though Manhunter was the 1st film adaption of the Thomas Harris novel, it is a different movie altogether, moody, dark...and totally different than the novel, to the extent that the Hannibal character is almost not important. So there you go: #1: Silence and #2: Red Dragon.

One of the all time classics. A brilliant edge of your seat thriller. Cannot fault it really. To date we have watched it 7 times and we will certainly be watching it again in the future. A must for every bodies movie collection.

After coming in with tempered expectations, I think I actually enjoyed the movie even more than the very solid book. The casting was excellent - Keitel is perfect as Crawford, Fiennes is great as Dolarhyde, and I liked Norton as Graham a lot. I found the atmosphere tense and on edge throughout, and think it's the movie's biggest strength. The ending was just as electric as in the book. I thought they did an effective job in providing key character context without too much pure exposition, which many movies (eg the Godfather imo) find it a difficult balance to strike. Red Dragon is just an intense, atmospheric, really well directed crime movie.

So if you're wondering why I covered the sequel to this first, it's because I thought this was a sequel to "Silence of the Lambs", not the other way around. Either way, this is a great prequel, it still manages to capture a lot of the suspense that the previous film had, but it's more about mind games. Norton has to practically beat Lecter at his own game, which is no small feat. All the performances are great, I've yet to see Edward Norton have a bad role (sure I didn't like "American History X", but his performance was great). Everything works in this for me. Is it better than "Silence of the Lambs"? No, but there's still a lot of things to love about it.