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Red Dragon (2002 film)

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This entry is about the 2002 film. For other entries with similar names, see Red dragon.
Red Dragon
Directed byBrett Ratner
Written byThomas Harris (novel)
Ted Tally (screenplay)
Produced byDino De Laurentiis
StarringEdward Norton
Anthony Hopkins
Ralph Fiennes
Harvey Keitel
Emily Watson
Philip Seymour Hoffman
Mary-Louise Parker
CinematographyDante Spinotti
Edited byMark Helfrich
Music byDanny Elfman
Distributed byUniversal Pictures
Release dates
October 4, 2002
Running time
124 min.
CountryUSA USA
LanguageEnglish

Red Dragon is a 2002 thriller film, based on the novel written by Thomas Harris featuring the brilliant psychiatrist and serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Directed by Brett Ratner and written by Ted Tally (who also wrote the screenplay for The Silence of the Lambs), it starred Edward Norton as Graham and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter—a role he had, by then, played twice before in The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.

Red Dragon is, in publishing chronology, the first story in the Lecter saga (Hannibal Rising, a later-published origin story, was released on February 9, 2007). Red Dragon's story takes place before the events in The Silence of the Lambs, and after Lecter's original capture and incarceration. While Lecter plays a central role, Red Dragon focuses more on the characters of Will Graham and the tortured serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde.

Cast

Synopsis

Template:Spoiler Will Graham is called out of retirement by the FBI to help track down a serial killer known to law enforcement agencies and the press only as "The Tooth Fairy," who has murdered two families. Graham retired several years earlier after being nearly killed by his own co-agent, the brilliant forensic psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter, who turned out to be the serial killer that Graham was searching for at the time. Graham survived the attack by Lecter and captured him in the process. Haunted by the brilliant sociopath that was once his co-agent and friend, Graham must find the courage to ask him for help in finding "the Tooth Fairy." The Tooth Fairy is a disturbed man named Francis Dolarhyde, who worships Hannibal Lecter after learning of his crimes. Dolarhyde also calls himself the "The Great Red Dragon", because of his obsession with the William Blake painting, "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun". Graham later discovers that Lecter is manipulating him by corresponding with Dolarhyde.

The relationship between Lecter and Graham parallels the relationship between Lecter and Clarice Starling in the later books, but here there are different overtones. Lecter treats Starling as an unworthy student but Graham as a fellow professional (though not an equal). Lecter's acceptance of Graham does not stop at the being "professional" level, but extends further into the overlapping realm between Graham's and Lecter's surprisingly similar psyches.

Two complications hinder the investigation. On the one hand there is Freddy Lounds, a tabloid reporter who once ran afoul of Graham during the Lecter case and is now dogging him to get the story on The Tooth Fairy. On the other hand there is the correspondence between Lecter and Dolarhyde which eventually sees Lecter providing Dolarhyde with Graham's home address, endangering Graham's wife and son. Fortunately, both complications are solved: the first because Dolarhyde kills Lounds after the latter writes unfavourably about him in the newspapers, the second because Graham manages to evacuate his family from their house before any harm can come to them.

In the mean time Dolarhyde meets Reba McClane, a blind co-worker at Chromalux Film & Videotape Services. Dolarhyde and McClane begin a romantic relationship. Dolarhyde's newfound love conflicts with his homicidal urges, which manifest themselves in his mind as his separate personality "The Great Red Dragon". After his association with Reba, Dolarhyde attempts to stop the Dragon's "possession" of him. In order to stop killing, he believes that he must dominate the dragon by consuming the original copy of the painting. Dolarhyde goes to the Brooklyn Museum, beats a museum secretary unconscious, and eats the original Blake watercolour of The Red Dragon.

File:Willandgram.jpg
Hannibal Lecter assisting Will Graham with an investigation.

Graham eventually realizes that the killer knew the layout of his victims' houses from their home videos, which he only could have seen if he worked for Chromalux, the company that transers the home videos to video cassette. Dolarhyde's job at Chromalux gives him access to all home movies that pass through the company. Sensing that he is about to be caught, Dolarhyde goes to see McClane one last time, but he finds her talking to a co-worker, Ralph Mandy (in this film, a composite of Dandridge and Ralph Mandy in the novel, corresponding to Ralph Dandridge in Manhunter). Enraged, Dolorhyde kills Ralph Mandy, kidnaps McClane and, having taken her to his house, sets the place on fire. He apparently intends to kill her and then himself, but finds himself unable to shoot her. After he apparently shoots himself, McClane escapes.

Graham is given Dolarhyde's scrapbook, saved from the wreckage of the house, which details the killer's obsession with the Blake painting and his admiration of Hannibal Lecter's murder style. The book also exposes the abuse Dolarhyde suffered as a child at the hands of his grandmother, which evidently turned him into a monster.

However, it turns out Dolarhyde did not shoot himself, but used the body of a previous victim (the body is that of Ralph Mandy; in the novel, it is that of a gas station attendant with whom Dolarhyde had had a previous confrontation) in order to stage his own death. Dolarhyde pursues Graham to his home and attacks Graham's son. In order to save his son, Graham subsequently uses the same terms that Dolarhyde's grandmother had used against him (eg. "dirty little beast", threatening to cut off his penis, a threat Dolarhyde's grandmother had used to prevent him from bedwetting as a child), on his own son. This enrages Dolarhyde, who attacks Graham, allowing his son to escape to safety (this episode was added for the movie to prevent a rather graphically violent attack scene from ensuing). Graham's wife, Molly, ends the horrific deal by managing to shoot and kill Dolarhyde. After recovering, Graham receives a slightly triumphant letter from Lecter, which bids him well and hopes that he isn't too disfigured. The film ends with Dr. Chilton informing Lecter that there is a young woman from the FBI waiting to speak with him; presumably Clarice Starling.

Analysis

The story has been filmed twice. The first film, released in 1986 under the title Manhunter, was written and directed by Michael Mann and focused on FBI Special Agent Will Graham, played by William Petersen. Lecter (renamed Lecktor) was played by Brian Cox. Manhunter is often recognized as a looser adaptation, leaving out a small part of Dolarhyde's backstory and having him die at Graham's hands during the fire. Ratner's Red Dragon was more faithful to the novel in some respects, although it expanded Lecter's role to capitalize on the popularity of Hopkins' famous interpretation of that character (as well as a little more screen time for Jack Crawford and Frederick Chilton), though its chronology does not match that of the novels. It is also quite a bit darker than the book, and cuts out many scenes that Manhunter left in the film, as well as completely changing some scenes and who-did-what in some scenes.

One of the main themes covered in the book is Will Graham's struggle with his own nature: specifically, his ability to think and feel like a serial killer. Will's greatest fear is that he differs from the likes of Lecter and Dolarhyde by only the slim barrier erected by personal choice; that he is really a deranged and demented being who chooses to engage in an eternal standoff with his darker impulses. This ability to have final dominance over one's impulses is what Dolarhyde sought to establish by eating the Blake painting.

It is no accident that Lecter calls Dolarhyde "Pilgrim". Yet, where Lecter is base and primal in his communications with Dolarhyde ("You're very beautiful"), he behaves in a cultured, refined manner in his dealings with Graham. Lecter symbolizes a midpoint between the two journeyman "monsters": Dolarhyde, who is at a "less-evolved" state where he still acts solely to sate his impulses, and Graham, who instead fights his darker nature and uses it to hunt those who would not share his fight. Lecter, who has chosen to rationalize and intellectualize his actions by killing only the rude and incompetent, seems to harbor an affinity towards Graham, perhaps because of their similar backgrounds in academia and their mutual disdain for 'irrational' killing, but most likely because Graham's decision is based on choice. Dolarhyde, in believing he has no choice in the matter, exhibits weaker mental fortitude, and thus places himself below Graham in Lecter's eyes.

A key moment in this storyline occurs when Graham tries to goad Lecter into helping him catch the Dragon. Graham suggests it would be an opportunity to prove that Lecter is smarter than the emerging Dragon character. Lecter proves himself capable of meeting Graham's challenge, ruining both Dolarhyde and Graham, having set the two against each other. In the book, Dolarhyde stabs Graham in the face in the end, but is attacked by Molly, who strikes him with an aluminium fishing rod, embedding a barbed hook into his cheek, while the sequence goes quite differentely in the film. This means that Dolarhyde leaves Graham with a permanent disfigurement, something Graham's mind will be hard-pressed to ignore as a sort of "mark of the beast", a reminder of what he is. Harris foreshadows Graham's fate during Lecter and Graham's exchange on the Tooth Fairy's self-loathing and disfigurement. Lecter accomplishes all of this on a whim while incarcerated in a maximum security facility.

Lecter's wit and charm, his ability to toy with people and to remain a serious threat even while imprisoned and heavily restrained and the obvious fear he evokes through this, were all used by Harris to create a dark mystique and infamy around the Lecter character, which Harris highlights by refusing to ever directly mention the nature of Lecter's crimes or his exact methods of murder. This leaves the reader with the challenge of reconciling the debonair and affluent, if evidently sadistic character whom they are introduced to through the narrative, with the psychotic serial killer perception Harris deliberately builds up around the character of Dr. Lecter, but never in his presence. It was these qualities and their contrast with the usual slasher-story method of totally dehumanizing the killer through excruciating explication which made the Lecter character such a show-stealer, and set the stage for that character to become the subject-in-his-own-right of the now world-famous "Hannibal Lecter" series of books which have inspired the blockbuster films.

Response

Red Dragon was a box office success, earning $92,930,005 in the US [1]. It received a mixed reaction from many critics. While some reviewers compared it negatively to Manhunter, others, such as Roger Ebert, were enthusiastic about the remake. The average Rotten Tomatoes rating was 'fresh' with a rating of 68%, much lower than Manhunter's 94%, which also had 100% by its Cream of the Crop, comparing to Red Dragon's very low Cream of the Crop rating. However, there are only 24 "Manhunter" reviews counted on Rotten Tomatoes as opposed to 177 "Red Dragon" reviews. [2]

Errors

Trivia

  • In this film, Frankie Faison reprises his role as Barney, the orderly from The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Though Barney wasn't featured in the original novel, his mention of the year he came to the Hospital establishes that he could have been present during the events of Red Dragon, an example of a retcon. Faison is the only person to appear in all of the first four Hannibal Lecter films, having played Lt. Fisk in Manhunter.
  • Anthony Heald, who reprised his role as Dr. Frederick Chilton, wore a hair piece to match the hair style he wore in The Silence of the Lambs because at the time of shooting he sported a crew cut while in the TV show Boston Public.
  • Whereas MGM and Universal split distribution of Hannibal, MGM was a silent partner in this film, with Universal releasing the film in America and worldwide. On the DVD commentary track director Brett Ratner says that they were forced to go to MGM to obtain an establishing shot of the hospital where Lecter is incarcerated since it had been demolished since the production of The Silence of the Lambs and MGM insisted on co-distribution in return.
  • Brett Ratner wanted to digitally de-age Anthony Hopkins for this film but ultimately didn't do it. Four years later he would digitally de-age actors Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen in his film X-Men: The Last Stand during a flashback scene that took place several years prior to the beginning of the film.
  • The end of the film leads into the beginning of The Silence of the Lambs. While not explicitly stated, it is implied that Hannibal's female visitor is Clarice Starling.
  • The title "Red Dragon" is the name of the casino in Rush Hour 2, another film directed by Brett Ratner.


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