Barbelith Underground > Film, TV & Theatre > the new Hannibal Lecter franchise...

I've written a fairly long take on the film, posted to both my site and Blogcritics, so I'm only going to cut and paste from it here. The fact that Paleface has hit most of the sailent points makes it easier, but there's a few things I'll add here:

The main thing about Ratner as director is you've got a director of one successful franchise moving to another highly successful franchise. And the franchise treatment is the downfall, as screenwriter Ted Tally and Ratner spend valuable time pandering rather than getting to the point. In keeping with the franchise design, Tally's script is cut from the Silence mold, with a structure that is laughably similar to that film and a final sequence that insultingly reminds the audience that they're being bled dry by the franchise mentality. I'm surprised the final shot wasn't an ad for the Silence of the Lambs on DVD. As such, Red Dragon is a film that can never stand on its own, endlessly inviting comparisons to The Silence of the Lambs and Manhunter. Ratner uses the latter film as a crutch, in some sequences remaking it shot for shot rather than move into unfamiliar territory, leaning on cinematographer Dante Spinotti, who also shot Manhunter.

The good, interesting stuff:
Dollarhyde is a perfect image of emerging male sexuality. He sees himself as an undesirable misfit, ostracized from society. We've got to assume that he's a virgin, outside the context of whatever impulses he inflicts upon his victims. He uses violence, imagery and the act of seeing to attain a measure of sexual power - all plausible links to pornography and the media depiction of sexuality. When at last he meets a woman willing to take him for who he is, Dollarhyde encounters a dilemma; all this time he's been murdering to attain personal and sexual power, and suddenly, he doesn't have to do it anymore. A woman he's attracted to returns his affections, rendering moot everything he's done up until this point. Yet he watches pornography as he has his first sexual relationship with her. Can these two sexual ideas co-exist, the 'real' and the pornographic? Which does he prefer? This is strong stuff, but Ratner and Tally don't know how to handle it once the ideas are out there. Instead, they take the easy road, cutting back to a funny scene with Lecter, who's been downgraded to comic relief through social assimilation. (For a good example of this refer to the scene in the gym, in which Lecter lunges freely at Graham before being pulled up short by a chain, or puppet string, that extends into the sky.)

Ratner tries to force Ralph Fiennes into a stony serial-killer facade, but he breaks through it whenever possible, particularly in scenes with Emily Watson. The two have a disquieting chemistry; one of the liveliest scenes in the film plays in Dollarhyde's living room, as the two tighten their sexual orbits around one another before a series of locked-off camera angles. Their two performances are the best in the film, and it's nothing but a shame that Ratner and Tally choose instead to enact more funny but pointless scenes with Lecter. The relationship between Dollarhyde and Reba was big in Manhunter as well, but this time it feels more affecting, perhaps because Fiennes breaks down some of the distance built into the script.

Further, the film hints at but doesn't explore the idea of a life-cycle of violence, and not the "killer inspired by killer" cinema cycle. To save his son, Graham uses the same abusive tactics experienced by Dollarhyde. It works, but what is the consequence? His son, verbally abused in the heat of a particularly impressionable moment? Despite any rational assessment of his father's motives, this kid will be forever scarred by the same force that created a murderous deviant in Dollarhyde. This chapter of the film closes with an image that promises little hope: Graham and family on a boat, isolated from the society that's threatened to destroy them more than once. This is not healing, or progress, but an unremittingly dark ending to an already grim tale. That it's followed by a superfluous chapter announcing the arrival of Clarice Starling exemplifies the film's submission to the commandments of franchise.