Rating: 
Summary: Close, but not as good as Silence
Review: I picked up this movie and watched it and I really liked it. I think that Anthony Hopkins and Edward Norton and great actors. I also thought that Ralph Fiennes played his role really well, this is the first movie of his that I have seen.The story was really good, very suspenseful, made we want to keep watch as you never knew what would happen next (unless you had read the book and then may have had some idea). There are a couple of freaky parts in the movie, but it is very good over all. Not as good as Silence of the Lambs, but close.
Rating: 
Summary: Almost recaptures the suspense of
Review: This prequil to "Silence of the Lambs" recaptures the suspense of the original movie; suspense that was sadly lacking in the second installment, "Hannibal." Here we see how Dr. Lechter came to be in prison, but he is in more of a supporting role this time. As in the original film, he "assists" an FBI agent in tracking down a serial killer, all the while playing devious mind games. I found the ending somewhat predictable, as it follows the formula of so many films of the genre. Think of the final scene of "Fatal Attraction" and you'll have this one figured out to.
Rating:
Summary: Much better then I though!
Review: I was expecting this movie to be the typical boring american blockbuster movie that people said it's the movie of the year when it's soooo boring but Red Dragon can be a movie of the year, I was very surprise at how good it was. The performance of Norton and Fiennes is very good but Hopkin it's so so, I just don't understand him, like Fiennes we understand why he did what he did but not Lecter. Norton always seem tired, he was good but he should act more powerful, he seem like too tired. Well Red Dragon was much better then Silence of the Lamb in my point of view but both are creepy. I don't know but I didn't like Silence of the Lamb but I had like Red Dragon.
Rating:
Summary: Killer Movie, Killer DVD Features!
Review: The movie: killer. Almost as good as Silence of The Lambs, I thought. Norton is great and Hopkins still manages to bring new life (or death?!) into the sickly intelligent mind of Hannibal The Cannibal. The DVD: Even more killer! Great interview with Hopkins, inside the mind of a serial killer with an FBI profiler-the real life Norton who hunts these guys down-commentary and more. I grabbed this for a price of [money], I would have paid the retail [money] or whatever for it-it's that great. Happy viewing and be sure to watch this one the sound up, some superb effects bounce all over the room, as with any DVD. 5 STAR RATING FROM SCRAGGY'S TOMB OF HORROR DVD'S, USA.
Rating:
Summary: Good film
Review: This is a good film, but I liked MANHUNTER more.
Rating: 
Summary: Teep, you've got that right, but I did like Fiennes
Review: The reason for the recreation of this cardboard version of the superiorly filmed "Manhunter", was the wasy of cashing in on Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal, visually in all three films. Brian Cox wasn't what I was thinking off a serial killer in that role, but still played it well. Maybe cause we didn't see him do anything harsh or terryfying. Hopkins is an awesome Hannibal, yet seeing him aged , and yet being in a prequal was laughable. Edward Norton is one of my personal fav actors. Here, his monotone, and hardly expressive character of Grahm was so hard to watch, especially with his talent he can and didn't progress here. William Petersen was great at playing the emotional turmoiled and tortured FBI Agent we were sympathysing with . Emily Watson and Ralph Fiennes stole this wafercracker show. If this HAD TO BE REMADE, then these two are the strength. Emily Watson was such a great character, as well as Ralph, still lacking SOME of the fridgid and psychoticness of the other actor who played the original Tooth Fairy. Fiennes was bruding though. Cool. I really like Brett Rainer's films with his fast paced directing and energy. Here, it just works like a machine without feeling (hardly). More like a RAdio Shack ROBIE coin collecter robot than a human experience. Micheal Mann is a captain of crime drama and mysteries with terror filled sequences. Brett Rainer will have to watch Manhunter again to see what he messed up on, and then get the ball rolling with his fun packed series Rush Hour, with installment #3.
Rating: 
Summary: Manhunter Is Better
Review: This movie replaces nothing. It is 30 minutes longer than Manhunter because it shows how Lecter was captured as in the book. The cast does a fair job, Hopkins is very good in this reprisal of the role, originally done by Brian Cox. Hopkins gets far more screen time than Cox got in Manhunter. It would be interesting to see if there was more footage of Brian that could be incorporated into a rerelease of Manhunter. Ed Norton is weak trying to imitate the excellent job that William Petersen did in Manhunter. Harvey Keitel ,who is a great actor, does not come across as a member of the FBI. Dennis Farina played the part perfectly. Mr. Noonan who is very tall was a more powerful "Tooth Fairy" Dolarhyde, he was in control. I can't help feeling that to many of the actors were trying to copy Manhunter. This movie dragged too much. I recommend you rent both movies you will "see" what I mean. I am not familiar with this directer, you would think they would have hired a director with a known past for this project.
Rating: 
Summary: Once more, with feeling---& Anthony Hopkins!
Review: I'm not at all opposed to a good remake of a classic film, but I believe it should have something new to say, something that makes it relevant to the modern age and time. Almost a shot-for-shot remake of the original and woefully underrated classic "Manhunter", "Red Dragon" fails on this score, and lacks the tortuous internal struggle of its detective and the trancelike, music-video pacing that made the original so creepy, poetic, and melodic. "Red Dragon" comes across as a bloodless, boring, dispirited, dreary, and mechanical cloning of the first film, directed by Michael Mann, which told the same story back in 1986 with style, wit, horror, and cinematic aplomb. Trouble is, Anthony Hopkins hadn't signed on to the role as society psychiatrist-turned-serial-killer Hannibal Lecter at the time, and Hollywood didn't have two massively successful Hannibal Lecter movies under its belt to capitalize on. The solution: remake "Manhunter", this time casting Hopkins as the cannibalistic Lecter. "Red Dragon" introduces Hannibal Lecter by way of Will Graham (Edward Norton), an FBI profiler brought back to work on the case of a new serial killer nicknamed "The Tooth Fairy" by a yellow journalist (Phillip Seymour Hoffman) at the National Tattler. Graham, nearly killed by Lecter, needs help in tracking and identifying the killer, and, like Clarisse Starling in 'Silence', visits the good doctor to get a 'scent for the hunt'. There are some slight alterations, none of them for the better. Where "Manhunter" was about the internal voyage of the troubled Graham into the soul and mind of a serial killer, "Red Dragon" is Hannibal Lecter's movie. The first scene of the movie, which replaces the far eerier flashlight introduction to the Tooth Fairy in "Manhunter", is an account of Will Graham's near fatal encounter with Lecter. The scene is amusing, well-paced, and akin to the baroque sensibilities of Ridley Scott's "Hannibal", and earns the one star I've offered in this review; the viewer would do well to cut off the movie at this point and go watch "Manhunter." In every comparison with Michael Mann's original, the movie falls far short; having seen "Manhunter" and watching this workmanlike copy is like looking at your uncle's yellowed polaroid of the Mona Lisa, after having seen the original on display. The treatment of the villain in "Red Dragon" is similarly flawed; the Tooth Fairy is introduced too soon, Ralph Fiennes (who does a competent job with what little he is given) is unable to evoke the bestial Dolarhyde, and even one of the film's horrific centerpieces, the flaming-wheelchair scene, comes off as a disinterested photocopy of the horrifying original. Gone is the mounting suspense of Graham's troubling inner journey into his own wounded psyche and his terrifying relationship with Lecter; in its place we have Norton's complacent banter with a visibly mellowed Anthony Hopkins, who manages to make a cannibalistic serial killer look like a purring, content kitten. Gone too is Mann's use of contemporary music to evoke the Lecter's nihilistic universe and Graham's tortured one; notable in its absence is the modern equivalent of Iron Butterfly's 'Anna Gada Da Vida', used to startling effect in the original to make the culminating sequence of that movie approach Italian grand opera. What do we have in place of all this? A clumsy, contrived 'explanation' for the Tooth Fairy's depravity, a psychosexually abusive relationship with his dead mother that could have been lifted directly from "Psycho." "Red Dragon" is a technically competent movie, and to those viewers unfamiliar with the cinematic source material Rattner has pillaged it might serve as 2+ hours of pleasingly bland serial killer fare. But the viewer is best served to go out and buy "Manhunter" for a glimpse of true horror and a better perspective into the mind of a psychopath; "Red Dragon" is tapwater to "Manhunter's" chianti.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining Prequel
Review: RED DRAGON begins years before SILENCE OF THE LAMBS and is therefore a prequel that introduces a Hannibal Lechter (Anthony Hopkins), who paradoxically, looks older than in the latter film. The opening minutes set the tone for both films as director Brett Ratner explains how Dr. Lechter was imprisoned in the first place. FBI agent Will Graham (Edward Norton) is consulting with a Dr. Lechter who has not yet been identified as a mass murderer. The scene that reveals Dr. Lechter's true nature is shocking in its graphic intensity. However gruesome this revelation may be both for Will Graham and the audience, it is necessary to place Dr. Lechter in a position of incarceration from which he will later be able to serve as yet another source of expert opinion needed to catch a new killer, the 'Tooth Fairy.' It is at this point that the film takes a twist that diverts the dramatic focus from the mad doctor. Unfortunately, this was the same twist that was earlier used in HANNIBAL, the third of the series. Several reviewers have expressed dissatisfaction about what they saw as an overliberal borrowing from Dr. Lechter's future villainous roots. This is, however, only a minor problem. Hopkins is such an accomplished actor that he makes maximum use of his diminished screen time. Even when he is thoroughly manacled or rendered harmless, his malignant eyes and hypnotically soothing voice still make him an object of fear. More than once does Will Graham flinch whenever Dr. Lechter wishes him to. Director Ratner wisely allows Hopkins' absence to be filled with Ralph Fiennes, who plays the Tooth Fairy, who in turn, forms first a bond of admiration for Lechter then later one of bitterness for Graham. Fiennes is effectively creepy as the tatooed eye-gouger who is driven by his own demons that originated PSYCHO-like from a bestial grandmother that Hitchcock first envisioned. RED DRAGON is a suspenseful thriller that allows Hopkins, Norton, and Fiennes to bounce off each other at all the right moments. True, this movie was first filmed as MANHUNTER in 1986, and comparisons are inevitable. MANHUNTER is a superb piece of cinematic villainy in its own right, but the true test of a film that seeks to stand either as a prequel and/or a remake, is whether that film adds materially to our understanding of the protagonist. What emerges from RED DRAGON and to a lessor extent from the others in the Hannibal Lechter saga is a portrait of a madman who kills because that is the only way that he can get interesting people like Will Graham or Clarise Starling to pay attention to him.
Rating:
Summary: OK but Manhunter was MUCH better.
Review: As much as I like Ralph Fiennes - & I think he's one of the very best English-speaking actors around - I thought Tom Noonan was a better & far spookier tooth fairy. Plus I found William Petersen a more vulnerably seasoned & believable Will Graham. Also Hopkins is so ramped up in this go-round that you'd think it was the last of Hannibal, not a prequel. Not the smoothy he's supposed to be in the next installment (must have taken a real cold shower before they let Clarice in). Overall I'd say this is acceptable for an MTV-style corporate re-do. Very flashy, very loud, very contemprorary textbook.
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