Hey folks, Harry here with the first review anywhere from the film... RED DRAGON, the prequel to SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, the remake of MANHUNTER and the proving ground for Brett Ratner. I've known Brett for a few years now... Not really as friends, but we've talked a couple of times and I know that his main love of film comes from a rabid passion for Seventies film. If you meet him someday, ask about THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE and you'll get two earfuls... Bring up ENTER THE DRAGON and watch. So it has always been odd to me that he's never had a film that lent itself to the aesthetic of the seventies. That sort of unflinching mind fuckability that the seventies had. WELL... Though that first RED DRAGON trailer might not have been too hot, Jack Daniels is here with the first review anywhere of RED DRAGON. Now, Jack has been a reviewer for us in the past writing in from San Diego screenings of films like AMERICAN PIE 2 and... He was also the first reviewer of Ridley Scott's HANNIBAL back in November of 2000 and here he is with the next episode of the Lecter saga! And from the sound of it... It looks like there is a possibility that Ratner nailed it! Let's hope, he's got a great script and a great cast... All he has to do is tie it up perfectly and we won't have to spoon them brains!
Harry, Harry, Harry, mutha-fuckin, Harry! Jack Daniels reporting in once again from the lovely and constant 74 degrees city of San Diego. Home of Comicon 2000 and fucking 2 and tonight, in the exact same theater at Horton Plaza, yet a year and a half later where Hannibal was first seen, my drunken, hazy eyes laid upon the latest Hannibal the Cannibal Lecter flick, Red Dragon. Yep, that one. Ed Norton, Harvey Keitel, Phillip Sey-more-of-me Hoffman, Ray Fiennes and the always doey-eyed and lovely, Emily Watson. Oh yea, and that guy Anthony Hopkins. Looking like he should in a prequel. Slick back hair, suckin’ in the Weider-enhanced belly. Gawd, this movie rocked.
Do you dream, Harry? Do you really dream? Thus the message. As I stated in my review dated oh so back in November of the new Millenium, nothing can come close to “Silence of the Lambs.’ ‘Hannibal’ was good, great in a way, but to no avail could it cum close to its predecessor. ‘Red Dragon’ does. Why? It’s the stanky, wet, cold hallway of the Baltimore Insane Asylum, the plexi-glass cell we see, a figure lying on his cot, talking in that famous Queen’s English accent; the fear=sweaty pits we see in Special Agent Will Graham as he finishes his sessions with Hannibal; the constant struggle/upper hand between Dr. Chilton and Lecter; but above all, the sense of vanity and erogenous pride between our antagonists (‘Buffalo Bill’ and Lecter in ‘Silence’ and ‘The Tooth Fairy’ and Lecter in this) – yet, I pause, could Lecter end up being our protagonist? Hmmmm…
I have to admit I was a little late to the screening. You see, I got caught up throwing back a few of my signatures and chatting with a lovely, ok, skanky, older thing wearing a black boa and flapper dress. Before I knew it, time had escaped (as it had in boa-woman) and I found myself hurtling/hurling toward the theater I oh so frequent. There he was on the screen. Hannibal Lecter. Huge. The doctor we knew of in ‘Silence,’ dressed in an everyday ensemble, chatting with Agent Graham. We realize Graham is there for his help, yet unconsciously he knows he’s there for another matter. And then, BOOM! A book is opened and we see the word ‘sweetbread’ hand-written in an anatomy book in a “skin” section; the realization on Graham’s face; a knife to Graham’s abdomen while Lecter calmly describes what he’s about to feel, the numbness and ‘warm bath’ feeling in his mind; and then the doctor is down, a group of arrows Graham some how manages to grab and thrust inside Lecter, finished off with a few shots from his nine – the title “Red Dragon” comes to the screen and under opening credits we see tabloid articles being pasted into a scrapbook of Graham’s slow recovery and decision to testify, Lecter’s trial and judgement, nine consecutive life terms. And the story starts.
Graham is talked out of his boat engine-tuning retirement by Keitel’s Jack Crawford to help catch a serious whack-job who enjoys killing families and sticking chards of mirror in their eye holes and biting them, leaving his signature fucked up teeth marks on each body. Played by full-body tattooed, Fiennes, Francis Dolarhyde AKA the Tooth Fairy, believes he is becoming the Red Dragon, an apocalyptic figure in Biblical Revelations that will overcome the world – a god-complex to the ‘nth degree, if you may – but Dolarhyde admires the doctor, playing to his own narcissistic enigma, thus placing Lecter in the middle of Graham and Fairy; a director to the drama unfolding. But the mentally and physically marred Dolarhyde finds temporary refuge in a young blind co-worker, Reba (played by Emily Watson) who just may become his next victim. That’s all I’m sharing. Fill in the holes your pathetic selves. I’m burnt, a little hung over and looking to crash.
However, one of the few great scenes in the film is of Will Graham taking off his jacket after the first visit with Lecter in his cell. Sweat marks in his Brooks Brothers shirt and the sigh. That one scene is the audience. During the whole conversation between the two, not a fucking peep was heard in the house and when we see the jacket coming off in the waiting room, the audience lets out their breath. Everything was right, the way this series should be.
And then there’s the scene we see Lecter enjoying a little you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours dinner. Here we are in the dank halls of a psycho ward and two 5-star chefs are preparing an incredible meal outside Lecter’s cell, with Lecter eating off a skirted table. A chef puts a course into Lecter’s serving shelf and there is Lecter at the pelxiglass all of a sudden, mouthing/teething the words, Thank You. And then a raise of the chianti to the security camera being watched closely by Dr. Chilton.
This may be the third in the series, but somehow, even with a different director, it hits it. It? Yea, it. The it we felt in the first film, the it we first saw behind the glass, the it on the face of those who talked to him and the it that made us all jump and feel disgusted. Somehow its come full circle and made it complete. There’s no need for another. We don’t need to how it ends up. Fuck it. I’m starting to confuse myself… need more alcohol. Now.
I’ll be in TalkBack. Let the questions fly my brothers and sisters…
I’m out.
Jack Daniels
