Red Dragon 2.5-3 Stars (out of four)
In another one of my compare the movie remake to the original series, I rewatched Michael Mann's 1986 film Manhunter and Brett Ratner's 2002 remake Red Dragon, both based on Thomas Harris' book Red Dragon, arguably his best of the Hannibal Lecter series he wrote. For those of you who don't know, retired FBI criminal profiler Will Graham (loosely based on the real FBI profiler John Douglas, founder of the Behavioral Sciences Unit in the FBI who do profile serial killers. Check out his book Mindhunter for a riveting and stomach-churning account of his career.) is brought back on a case where a serial killer is killing families. He has a tendency to bite and therefore named The Tooth Fairy. Graham left the FBI soon after he apprehended Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, whom we met in Silence of the Lambs. The FBI is stumped and so is Graham, so he seeks out the help of Lecter to catch the tooth fairy. Hannibal agrees, but also has a mean streak towards Graham and tries to get him killed. It turns out The Tooth Fairy, Francis Dolarhyde, was a victim of hideous abuse as a child and is trying to transform himself into something good by killing these people. Obviously, the good guys win and get Dolarhyde.
The reason I bring this set of films up is for two reasons. One, to help people rediscover a creepy little gem that they probably missed in the 80s. The other is Anthony Hopkins, who has now become synominous with the role. First, Manhunter was made by the creator of Miami Vice, Michael Mann, at the height of the TV show's fame. It's easy to forget now, but Miami Vice set a new tone and visual for cop shows in the 80s that became a template for later shows. The use of unforgettable visuals, with the surreal color mixed with gritty realism of the show, combined with the use of Rock music and a zeitgeist of the moment synthesizer score by Jan Hammer, made Miami Vice impossible to ignore. But one can see Mann's directorial palette developing as early as 1981 with the film Thief. I know a Mann film will always be interesting to see and make it a point to see as many of his films as I can. Manhunter uses all the elements that made Miami Vice so interesting, and yet turned it on its head to present a profoundly creepy and affecting film.
I have always felt films of the 70s and 80s had a much more, for lack of a better term, cruel and hard edge to them that movies outside of the horror genre lack today, much to their detriment. Now, I'm not saying that I want to necessarily want a lot of hard movies to watch, it's just they have become predictable and vanilla. And much more morally relativistic. Manhunter makes a point in the film near the end through Graham that Dolarhyde was not born evil, but was made a monster through systematic abuse. As a child, he needs to be pitied. But as an adult, the enormity of his crimes merits death. In Red Dragon, they go the opposite way. As I said, our entertainment is much more morally relativistic, more ambiguous. Red Dragon examines Dolarhyde's abuse in horrifying flashbacks. It gains us empathy for him. While we do not condone his horribly cruel murders of two families, we feel sorry for him nonetheless. He can't help himself, and therefore deserving of pity. Now, I'm not trying to make a political statement here on justice or comment on the mentally insane, it is an interesting mirror on the attitudes of society at the time, and they are vastly different. In the 80s, Dolarhyde deserves death for his heinous crimes. In the new millennia, he deserves pity and rehabilitation, with no real punishment for the consequences of his actions. There are no sides, just 50 Shades of Gray (sorry, sorry. Couldn't help myself).
Which brings us to the elephant in the room, Anthony Hopkins. Few actors get the chance to play such a delicious, career-making role. Hopkins was a good, reliable actor in most everything he did until he gleefully chewed the scenery in Silence of the Lambs which he took to entertainingly Shatner-ian heights. This was the turning point that made him into a star, and he wisely returned to the well twice more with Hannibal and Red Dragon. This role is not only career-defining, but genre-shaping as the retreading still goes on today with show like The Blacklist or The Rock. He was so good, it's really hard to imagine anyone else in it. In fact, in Red Dragon, he has a mean streak in him not really evident in the other stories as this was a younger, and angrier Hannibal, trying to kill the man that put him away. But for an interesting, different take, Brian Cox plays Lecter in Manhunter. Unlike Hopkins, who flies off the rails at times, Cox has a much more measured performance, filled with nuance. This only heightens the creepiness of Manhunter. If you were to go off the performance of Brian Cox, you never really know what Lecter is capable of, unlike when Hopkins jumps out of his skin. The effect is that there is an undercurrent of menacing evil in Manhunter that doesn't exist in Red Dragon. Red Dragon is also much more explicit in the gore quotient, hammering home the obvious, where Manhunter is much more judicious in its use on gore. Hitchcock once said there is nothing more terrifying than a closed door. Your mind will necessarily fill in what it doesn't see, and that will ultimately be more horrible than anything on screen. This has been demonstrated time and again from Psycho to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Halloween to the chainsaw scene in Scarface to The Sixth Sense or Signs or even The Silence of the Lambs. Ultimately, what you don't see is more horrifying that what you do because your mind will fill in the blanks. However, sustaining this type of dread is very difficult to do and most filmmakers can't do it or the audience won't brook it, raised on a diet of cheap slasher films that replace dread with ephemeral thrills.
So, if you are in the mood for an interesting alternative take on Lecter, one of our favorite movie villains, check out Manhunter.
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