Red Dragon (film)

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This entry is about the 2002 film. For other entries with similar names, see Red dragon.

Red Dragon

Directed by	Brett Ratner
Produced by	Dino De Laurentiis
Written by	Thomas Harris (novel) Ted Tally (screenplay)
Starring	Edward Norton Anthony Hopkins Ralph Fiennes Harvey Keitel Emily Watson Philip Seymour Hoffman Mary-Louise Parker
Music by	Danny Elfman
Cinematography	Dante Spinotti
Editing by	Mark Helfrich
Distributed by	Universal Pictures
Release date(s)	October 4, 2002
Running time	124 min.
Language	English
Preceded by	Hannibal Rising
Followed by	The Silence of the Lambs
IMDb profile

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 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. This film is set to be followed by Hannibal Rising.

Red Dragon is, in both publishing chronology and story order, the first story in the Lecter trilogy. The 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.

The title refers to a painting by William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun.

1 Cast
2 Synopsis
3 Some analysis
4 Other versions
5 Response
6 Trivia
7 External links

[edit] Cast

Edward Norton - Will Graham
Anthony Hopkins - Hannibal Lecter
Ralph Fiennes - Francis Dolarhyde
Emily Watson - Reba McClane
Mary Louise Parker - Molly Graham
Harvey Keitel - Special Agent Jack Crawford
Philip Seymour Hoffman - Freddy Lounds
Frankie Faison - Barney
Ellen Burstyn - Voice of Dolarhyde's Grandmother in flash back scenes
Frank Langella (scenes deleted) - Voice of the Dragon

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

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 after being nearly killed by the serial killer Hannibal Lecter, who was subsequently captured in the process. Graham turns to Lecter for help in tracking down The Tooth Fairy. However, Graham discovers that Lecter is manipulating not only him but also the man he is hunting.

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 psyches.

A complication in the investigation is Freddie 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. The Tooth Fairy is Francis Dolarhyde. Dolarhyde, an avid reader of Lounds' paper, The National Tattler, is displeased with what Lounds writes about him, and murders him horrifically.

Dolarhyde meets Reba McClane, a blind co-worker at Chromalux Film & Videotape Services, where Dolarhyde's work gives him access to the home movies which the company transfers to videocassette. Dolarhyde and McClane begin a romantic relationship. Dolarhyde's newfound love conflicts with his homicidal urges, which manifest themselves in his mind as a separate personality he calls "The Great Red Dragon," after the Blake painting. Posing as a researcher, Dolarhyde enters the Brooklyn Museum, beats a museum secretary unconscious, and eats the original Blake watercolour of The Red Dragon which is kept there, believing that if he consumes the Dragon, he can stop killing and pursue a normal relationship with McClane. Image:Willandgram.jpg

After Lecter gives Dolarhyde Graham's address in code (through the personal advertisements in The Tattler), thus endangering Graham and his family, Graham becomes obsessed with the case, eventually realizing 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. 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. 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 as well as the abuse Dolarhyde suffered as a child at the hands of his grandmother, which evidently turned him into a monster.

It transpires that Dolarhyde had not shot himself, but merely the body of a previous victim (in the movie Red Dragon, 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). Dolarhyde pursues Graham to his home, and attacks Graham's family. In the movie Red Dragon, Graham 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). Dolarhyde cuts Graham, who first stabs him in the leg, then retreats to the bedroom with the son to retrieve a gun. Graham's wife, Molly, enters the hallway. Dolarhyde steps in behind her. Molly throws herself to the floor and Dolarhyde and Graham shoot each other through the louvred bedroom door which incapacitates Graham. Molly ends the horriffic deal by shooting and killing Dolarhyde before he gets up again. After recovering, Graham receives a slightly triumphant letter from Lecter.

[edit] Some analysis

Mann's Manhunter was a very loose adaptation, leaving out Dolarhyde's backstory and having him die at Graham's hands during the fire. Ratner's Red Dragon was more faithful to the novel, although it expanded Lecter's role to capitalize on the popularity of Hopkins' famous interpretation of that character.

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. 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 mass-murderer 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.

[edit] Other versions

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.

[edit] 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 70%.[2]

[edit] 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 introduction in The Silence of the Lambs establishes that he would have been present during the events of Red Dragon, an example of a retcon. Faison is the only person to appear in all 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 McKellan in his film X-Men: The Last Stand during a flashback scene that took place several years prior to the beginning of the film.

[edit] External links

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Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to:

Red Dragon (film)

Films directed by Brett Ratner
Whatever Happened to Mason Reese (1990) • Money Talks (1997) • Rush Hour (1998) • The Family Man (2000) • Rush Hour 2 (2001) • Red Dragon (2002) • After the Sunset (2004) • X-Men: The Last Stand (2006) • Rush Hour 3 (2007) • The Boys From Brazil (2008)