Rating: Summary: Excellent addition to your Lector Library Review: This movie is for all of you that want the complete set of Anthony Hopkins as Lector. While Manhunter will remain one of my all time favorite movies, Red Dragon is a very satisfying adaptation of Thomas Harris' book. IMHO the ending and the demise of Frances Dolarhyde in Red Dragon is truer to the book ending and therefore a bit more exciting than the ending used in Manhunter. I would recommend this movie to anyone that wants to revel in Anthony Hopkins at his best Lector moments, and of course the end of the movie setting us up for Silence of the Lambs, was cute.
Rating: Summary: Delectable Film Review: "Red Dragon" is a tight thrilling film, and a much better adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel than the first try, "Manhunter" which was just plain boring. "Red Dragon" will leave you gasping for air with fright, even if you know the novel by heart, and, if your um tastes run akin to mine, Anthony Hopkins will leave you breathless with longing. He is wonderful for an amazing thrid time as Hannibal Lecter. The added Lecter scenes are beautifully done, and so flawless I nearly believed them to be part of the original story. Hopkins is absolutely brilliant. Yum.
Rating: Summary: Excellent Adaptation to a first class book. Review: Red Dragon is what Manhunter should have been. This is a taunt, unnerving piece of filmmaking that really ranks right next to Silence of The Lambs as one of the best psychological thrillers ever made. Edward Norton is great as Will Graham and Ralph Fieness is amazing as Frances Dolarhyde and their performances alone are worth the praise alone, but it's Anthony Hopkins's third go around as Hannibal Lector that makes this film the crowd pleasers that it is. Hopkins gives a more unnerving performance than he gave with ether Silence or Hannibal that is laced with enough black humor that makes him almost disturbing to watch. This film really shows how sinister Hannibal can truly be, especially when he wants vengeance. This is a first class adaptation in the highest order, and I hope this is not the last we see of the good doctor.
Rating: Summary: Not quite "Silence," but better than "Hannibal" Review: This movie was good, and entertaining to watch, but there were some silly things in it. It was fun to see Hannibal Lecter as a caged psychopath again, and Edward Norton was fantastic. The man who portrayed the Red Dragon though, (Ralph Fiennes) did a good job, but his character was kindof silly. He was an annoying villian, and not much fun to watch. He was amazing in Schindler's List, but the scenes with him in this kindof dragged. Nonetheless it was a good movie, it just lacked the amazement to it that Silence of the Lambs had, and it surely isn't headed to the Academy Awards. It was better than Hannibal though. The R rating is due to very little (as well as un-neccesary) profanity, some non-sexual nudity, and violence.
Rating: Summary: Best adaptation of the novel Review: This one is clearly far better than manhunter. With Red Dragon we are much in the thoughts of the killer and it is more respectful to the book than Manhunter. I recommend to read the novel first then to watch manhunter and eventually watch Red Dragon. This way you will really appreciate !
Rating: Summary: Red Dragon Rocks! Review: I was nervous about this movie for many reasons - mainly because they did such a great job on Silence, and I thought Hannibal was great (I'm in the minority, I know), but I really wanted another installment of my favourite trilogy that I would never get bored of watching. To my great relief and undying gratitude, they pulled it off. The technical aspects of this movie are artful and expert, while the dramatic side also turned out beautifully. Somehow, they managed to complete the circle, and I will definitely watch this movie over and over again. There is even evidence of Lecter's character developing over *all three movies* if you care to pay some attention. What a piece of genius this movie is, I couldn't extol its virtues enough.Even if you don't care for the rest of this story arc, this is a great standalone movie with a fantastic cast, all veteran actors who give the movie the feel of understated brilliance. The cinematography, lighting, direction, score - all excellent. I'd love to see multiple nominations for this one - Fiennes, Ratner and Elfman stand out in particular.
Rating: Summary: best of the bests Review: ý watched manhunter and the other films of the trilology. what ý am excited most is red dragon. as the players are the best like anthony hopkins no words to say, edward norton the anthony hopkins of the future , you do not want the film end. the beginning and the ending are marvelous. photography and screenplay are the best of the trilogy ý think. what can you except from a film? to keep you inside of it and can hardly wait to the end but at the same time you do not want it to end. it is the film that brought you in with the best players of hollywood.
Rating: Summary: Red Dragon (An old book with a new cover) Review: For those of you who think that this movie is an improvement over Hannibal, I agree that is slightly better. You have been duped, however. You should be comparing this to the movie Manhunter (1986) with William Peterson. Red Dragon is an attempted remake of an excellent movie with very little extra to offer accept an average performance from Anthony Hopkins. I urge you to watch Manhunter first, as it was made long ago, and you will see Red Dragon for what it really is. Considering whether this is a different adapatation as written by others, I recall much of the same dialogue from Manhunter and scenes straight out of Silence of the Lambs. One can only deduce this was made as a money maker first, and entertainment second.
Rating: Summary: LIGHT YEARS BETTER THAN HANNIBAL Review: Very good movie, 99% similar to the book. Anthony Hopkins as excellent as always. Just a few observations : Why Scott Glen didn't appear as Crawford ?, Graham's Wife acting (even as a supporting actress) was very, very bad. The music didn't help much compared to the Silent of The Lambs music. Even though Ralph Fiennes did great as Dolarhyde, casting director should have considered Gary Oldman, don't you think ?. Ed Norton was a little bit under his normal high quality acting.
Rating: Summary: Flawed, but worth a look Review: Ok, so the motivation behind the new 2002 adaptation of Thomas Harris's early 80s novel maybe purely money-driven, but the result is surprisingly rich and joyful. Who could have guessed that Brett Ratner, director of the mostly-bland Rush Hour series, was equipped to produce something with this amount of style and atmosphere? Certainly not me. I was expecting a mostly script-to-screen translation with little or no dedication by Ratner to the depth in the material. I was pleasantly surprised. This is not the first rendition of Harris's novel. In 1986, Michael Mann, who would later go on to write and direct a similarly-styled Cops-and-Robbers drama Heat, directed Manhunter, based loosely on the novel with a distinctly 80s feel. Hannibal's appearances in Manhunter are limited; Harris has only eight pages about him in the 500+paged novel. How was Mann to know then that Hannibal Lecter would become the icon that he is today. Die-hard Hannibal fan will recognize that as the one which featured Brian Cox, not Anthony Hopkins, as the diabolical cannibal. I have a gripe with Rater about this film though. He was quoted in Entertainment Weekly as referring to Manhunter as really having nothing to do with Harris's novel, which sounded entirely arrogant and disrespectful to a man who has so-far outdone Ratner in terms of the quality of material he turns out. There is no doubt in my mind that the main purpose of this film is to round out Harris's trilogy with Hopkins as the doctor and rake in cash. The producer want to sell Hannibal's name, and they do, though thankfully this movie is not about him. My problem with 1991's Best Picture-winner Silence of the Lambs was that it (like the novel) was overly fascinated with Hannibal, and the serial murder plot seemed like a flimsy clothesline on which to hang the Clarice and Lecter's strangely overwrought romantic affair. Thankfully, Red Dragon is about a serial murderer called The Tooth Fairy and the cop who chases him with the help of forensic science and good old-fashioned profiling (i.e. surrounding himself with pictures of dead people and mumbling to himself), and Hannibal takes a back seat to the story. Which is for the better. After all, he's not likely to impress us just sitting in his cell and acting evil after the frighteningly grisly things we saw him do in last year's Hannibal. Rising star Edward Norton (Fight Club) plays Investigator Will Graham, called out of retirement to assist the FBI in the hunt for a man who kills families in their beds. He is recovering physically and mentally from a confrontation with Hannibal Lecter that got Lecter in jail and Graham nearly-gutted. I don't think Norton is quite cut out for the role of Graham (CSI's William Peterson played Graham in Manhunter) but alas, he surpassed my expectations. If you haven't already figured it out, this is a Hannibal Lecter series, and not for the faint of heart or stomach. Let's see, if I remember correctly we have shootings, stabbings, people burning to death, a man getting his lips bitten off, glass shoved through eyes, some sexuality and some simply shocking scenes of unsettling weirdness. But I promise, no one has their own brains fed to them, and no one is disemboweled before our eyes. And it's for the better.
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