NOT YET ENTERED THE DRAGON - With the Chicago Film Festival kicking off last Friday -- I'll have some thoughts on the opening night tribute to Pierce Brosnan and his new movie, Evelyn, posted tomorrow -- plus assorted family commitments, I wasn't able to see the #1 movie in the country ($37.5), Red Dragon, this past weekend. In fact, since I am currently slated to see a different movie every night this week -- more on that tomorrow as well -- I may not get to see the Manhunter re-make/Silence of the Lambs prequel until next Sunday. On Rotten Tomatoes, 79 out of 117 critics have given it a favorable review, which doesn't surprise me much because the past few months...oh hell, the whole year for movies has been pretty bleak. Roger Ebert gives it 3 1/2 stars without ever really providing any substantial, persuasive reasons why. I suppose the most major disses would come from Elvis Mitchell in the NY Times and Michael Atkinson in the Village Voice. Both critics take a similar tack, denouncing the latest Hannibal Lecter effort as formulaic and overblown."

"Just when you think the picture can't go any farther over the top, it finds a whole new peak to tumble over."
-- Elvis Mitchell

"Red Dragon's formula is so risible and rote by now that the natural reaction to scenes of peril, torture, and suffering is flippant laughter."
-- Michael Atkinson

Online critics Stephanie Zacharek and David Edelstein -- from competing zines Salon and Slate, respectively -- also take a similar approach in their negative reviews, which is to compare it to Manhunter, Michael Mann's 1986 version of the Thomas Harris novel. I know I probably mention Edelstein way too much, but other than The New Republic's Stanley Kauffman, I don't think there's a more intelligent, insightful critic around. His Red Dragon review is actually more a review of Manhunter because he spends so much time praising it. A couple of his points caught my attention.

1) Edelstein suggests, as I did back on 8/7 (He's No William Petersen), that Ed Norton might be a little too young to play Agent Will Graham: "Graham is now Edward Norton, who can be a good, nervy actor, but whose gangly, boy-scout demeanor and reedy tenor don't begin to suggest the profiler's unsavory depths. When Hopkins purrs, "You caught me because we're very much alike," it seems as if Lecter is deranged: He has zero in common with this Gomer Pyle. The same line in Manhunter was palpably true: Cox and Petersen had the same morbid sadness, and so did Tom Noonan as the killer."

2) "Few movies open as disturbingly as Manhunter," Edelstein says. And he is dead-on. "The camera—to the accompaniment of a droning synthesizer—follows the beam of a flashlight through a dark house, up a staircase, to a bedroom where a couple lies asleep. The beam falls on the woman, who tosses briefly, then sits up and stares into the harsh light—whereupon the image, mercifully, goes black. This is, of course, the trek of Dolarhyde, who will slaughter the family in that house; but it could also be the vision of Petersen's Graham as he relives the night of carnage while staring at crime-scene glossies and bloodstained chalk-outlines. They're on the same eerie wavelength."

I have to say, this opening freaked me out, as did many images in Manhunter, when I finally saw it about a year ago. It was terrifying for the same reason Silence was, and the same reason Hannibal wasn't -- the real terror is left to your imagination. Throughout Silence I was just waiting for Lecter to get his chance to rip into somebody's flesh and sure enough, when he finally does bite into a prison guard, director Jonathan Demme was smart enough to cut. Whatever atrocious acts Lecter was committing, I was experiencing in my mind; I didn't need to see him actually do it. Compare this to, say, Ridley Scott's brain buffet in Hannibal. I have a few more thoughts on Red Dragon, but have to cut this short. More tomorrow.


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