Red Dragon is a 2002 thriller film, based on the novel written by Thomas Harris featuring the brilliant psychiatrist and serial killer Dr Hannibal Lecter.

Directed by Brett Ratner and written by Ted Tally (who also wrote the screenplay for Silence of the Lambs), it starred Edward Norton as Graham and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter—a role he had, by then, played twice before in The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. This film is set to be followed by Young Hannibal.

Red Dragon is, in both publishing chronology and story order, the first story in the Lecter trilogy. The story takes place before the events in The Silence of the Lambs, and after Lecter's original capture and incarceration. While Lecter plays a central role, Red Dragon focuses more on the characters of Will Graham and the tortured serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde.

The title refers to a painting by William Blake, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun.

Cast

Anthony Hopkins – Dr. Hannibal Lecter

Edward Norton – Will Graham

Ralph Fiennes – Francis Dolarhyde

Harvey Keitel – Jack Crawford

Emily Watson – Reba McClane

Mary-Louise Parker – Molly Graham

Philip Seymour Hoffman – Freddy Lounds

Anthony Heald – Dr. Frederick Chilton

Ken Leung – Lloyd Bowman

Frankie Faison – Barney Matthews

Tyler Patrick Jones – Josh Graham

Lalo Schifrin – Conductor

Tim Wheater – Flautist

John Rubinstein – Dinner Guest

David Doty – Dinner Guest

Brenda Strong – Dinner Guest

Robert Curtis-Brown – Dinner Guest

Mary Anne McGarry – Dinner Guest

Marc Abraham – Dinner Guest

Veronica De Laurentiis – Dinner Guest

Michael Cavanaugh – Forensic Dentist

Madison Mason – Police Commissioner

Bill Duke – Police Chief

Cliff Dorfman – Cop

Phillip B. Fahey – Cop

Katie Rich – Woman Detective

Alex Berliner – Photographer

Tom Verica – Charles Leeds

Marguerite MacIntyre – Valerie Leeds

Thomas Curtis – Billy Leeds

Jordan Gruber – Sean Leeds

Morgan Gruber – Susie Leeds

Richard Pelzman – Locksmith

Alex D. Linz – Young Francis Dolarhyde

Azura Skye – Bookseller

Andreana Weiner – Dr. Bloom's Secretary

William Lucking – Byron Metcalf

Elizabeth Dennehy – Beverly

Stanley Anderson – Jimmy Price

Joseph Simmons – Janitor

Terence Rowley – Superintendent

Gianni Russo – Newsie

Al Brown – Tattler Guard

Edward Nickerson – FBI Agent

Anthony Reynolds – FBI Agent

Jeanine Jackson – Dr. Hassler

Mark Moses – Father in Video

Kyra Helfrich – Child in Video

Frank Bruynbroek – Chef

Dwier Brown – Mr. Jacobi

Grace Stephens – Jacobi Child

Lucy Stephens – Jacobi Child

Kevin Bashor – Jacobi Child

Hillary Straney – Museum Secretary

Christopher Curry – Mr. Fisk

Tanya Newbould – Chromalux Secretary

Conrad E. Palmisano – Deputy in Car

Frank Langella – Voice of the Dragon

Markus Alexander – Baltimore Police Officer

Sho Brown – Officer

Ellen Burstyn – Grandma Dolarhyde

Robert Randolph Caton – Museum Patron

Norman Fessler – Driver

Lisa Haley – Musician

Mary Beth Hurt – Museum Curator

Aaron Michael Lacey – TV Cameraman

Paul Majors – Forensic Hospital Guard

Patty Malcolm – Dinner Guest

Lisa Thornhill – Mrs. Sherman

Frank Whaley – Ralph Mandy

Synopsis

Will Graham is called out of retirement by the FBI to help track down a serial killer known to law enforcement agencies and the press only as "The Tooth Fairy," who has murdered two families. Graham retired after being nearly killed by the serial killer Hannibal Lecter, who was subsequently captured in the process. Graham turns to Lecter for help in tracking down The Tooth Fairy. However, Graham discovers that Lecter is manipulating not only him but also the man he is hunting.

The relationship between Lecter and Graham parallels the relationship between Lecter and Clarice Starling in the later books, but here there are different overtones. Lecter treats Starling as an unworthy student but Graham as a fellow professional (though not an equal). Lecter's acceptance of Graham does not stop at the being "professional" level, but extends further into the overlapping realm between Graham's and Lecter's psyches.

A complication in the investigation is Freddie Lounds, a tabloid reporter who once ran afoul of Graham during the Lecter case and is now dogging him to get the story on The Tooth Fairy. The Tooth Fairy is Francis Dolarhyde. Dolarhyde, an avid reader of Lounds' paper, The National Tattler, is displeased with what Lounds writes about him, and brutally murders him.

Dolarhyde meets Reba McClane, a blind co-worker at Chromalux Film & Videotape Services, where Dolarhyde's work gives him access to the home movies which the company transfers to videocassette. Dolarhyde and McClane begin a romantic relationship. Dolarhyde's newfound love conflicts with his homicidal urges, which manifest themselves in his mind as a separate personality he calls "The Great Red Dragon," after the Blake painting. Posing as a researcher, Dolarhyde enters the Brooklyn Museum, beats a museum secretary unconscious, and eats the original Blake watercolour of The Red Dragon which is kept there, believing that if he consumes the Dragon, he can stop killing and pursue a normal relationship with McClane.

After Lecter gives Dolarhyde Graham's address in code (through the personal advertisements in The Tattler), thus endangering Graham and his family, Graham becomes obsessed with the case, eventually realizing that the killer knew the layout of his victims' houses from their home videos, which he only could have seen if he worked for Chromalux. Sensing that he is about to be caught, Dolarhyde goes to see McClane one last time, but he finds her talking to a co-worker, Ralph Mandy. Enraged, Dolorhyde kills Ralph Mandy, kidnaps McClane and, having taken her to his house, sets the place on fire. He apparently intends to kill her and then himself, but finds himself unable to shoot her. After he apparently shoots himself, McClane escapes.

Graham is given Dolarhyde's scrapbook, saved from the wreckage of the house, which details the killer's obsession with the Blake painting and his admiration of Hannibal Lecter as well as the abuse Dolarhyde suffered as a child at the hands of his grandmother, which evidently turned him into a monster.

It transpires that Dolarhyde had not shot himself, but merely the body of a previous victim (in the movie Red Dragon, the body is that of Ralph Mandy; in the novel, it is that of a petrol station attendant with whom Dolarhyde had had a previous confrontation). Dolarhyde pursues Graham to his home, and attacks Graham's family. In the movie Red Dragon, Graham uses the same terms that Dolarhyde's grandmother had used against him (eg. "dirty little beast", threatening to cut off his penis, a threat Dolarhyde's grandmother had used to prevent him from bedwetting as a child), on his own son. This enrages Dolarhyde, who attacks Graham, allowing his son to escape to safety (this episode was added for the movie to prevent a rather graphically violent attack scene from ensuing). Dolarhyde gains the upper hand and is about to kill Graham when Graham's wife, Molly, shoots Dolarhyde. After recovering, Graham receives a letter from Lecter. In the book, Dolarhyde stabs Graham in the face, but is attacked by Molly, who strikes him with an aluminium fishing rod, embedding a barbed hook into his cheek.

Mann's Manhunter was a very loose adaptation, leaving out Dolarhyde's backstory and having him die at Graham's hands during the fire. Ratner's Red Dragon was more faithful to the novel, although it expanded Lecter's role to capitalize on the popularity of Hopkins' famous interpretation of that character.

One of the main themes covered in the book is Will Graham's struggle with his own nature – specifically, his ability to think and feel like a serial killer. Will's greatest fear is that he differs from the likes of Lecter and Dolarhyde by only the slim barrier erected by personal choice; that he is really a deranged and demented being who chooses to engage in an eternal standoff with his darker impulses. This ability to have final dominance over one's impulses is what Dolarhyde sought to establish by eating the Blake painting.

It is no accident that Lecter calls Dolarhyde "Pilgrim". Yet, where Lecter is base and primal in his communications with Dolarhyde ("You're very beautiful"), he behaves in a cultured, refined manner in his dealings with Graham. Lecter symbolizes a midpoint between the two journeyman "monsters" – Dolarhyde, who is at a "less-evolved" state where he still acts solely to sate his impulses, and Graham, who instead fights his darker nature and uses it to hunt those who would not share his fight. Lecter, who has chosen to rationalize and intellectualize his actions by killing only the rude and incompetent, seems to harbor an affinity towards Graham, perhaps because of their similar backgrounds in academia and their mutual disdain for 'irrational' killing, but most likely because Graham's decision is based on choice. Dolarhyde, in believing he has no choice in the matter, exhibits weaker mental fortitude, and thus places himself below Graham in Lecter's eyes.

A key moment in this storyline occurs when Graham tries to goad Lecter into helping him catch the Dragon. Graham suggests it would be an opportunity to prove that Lecter is smarter than the emerging Dragon character. Lecter proves himself capable of meeting Graham's challenge, ruining both Dolarhyde and Graham, having set the two against each other. Dolarhyde leaves Graham with a permanent disfigurement, something Graham's mind will be hard-pressed to ignore as a sort of "mark of the beast", a reminder of what he is. Harris foreshadows Graham's fate during Lecter and Graham's exchange on the Tooth Fairy's self-loathing and disfigurement. Lecter accomplishes all of this on a whim while incarcerated in a maximum security facility.

Lecter's wit and charm, his ability to toy with people and to remain a serious threat even while imprisoned and heavily restrained and the obvious fear he evokes through this, were all used by Harris to create a dark mystique and infamy around the Lecter character, which Harris highlights by refusing to ever directly mention the nature of Lecter's crimes or his exact methods of murder. This leaves the reader with the challenge of reconciling the debonair and affluent, if evidently sadistic character whom they are introduced to through the narrative, with the psychotic mass-murderer perception Harris deliberately builds up around the character of Dr. Lecter, but never in his presence. It was these qualities and their contrast with the usual slasher-story method of totally dehumanizing the killer through excruciating explication which made the Lecter character such a show-stealer, and set the stage for that character to become the subject-in-his-own-right of the now world-famous "Hannibal Lecter" series of books which have inspired the blockbuster films.

Response

Red Dragon was a box office success, earning $92,930,005 in the US. It received a mixed reaction from many critics. While some reviewers compared it negatively to Manhunter, others such as Roger Ebert were enthusiastic about the remake. The average Rotten Tomatoes rating was 'fresh' with a rating of 70%.

Trivia

Director Brett Ratner wanted Michael Mann (who directed Manhunter) to make a cameo as a taxi driver.

When the film was released in 2002, Edward Norton was 33 years old. When Manhunter was released, William Petersen was also 33 years old.

Harvey Keitel plays a character originally played by Dennis Farina in Manhunter. In Get Shorty, Keitel played Farina's character in the movie within a movie.

In this film, Frankie Faison reprises his role as Barney, the orderly from The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal. Faison is the only person to appear in all four Hannibal Lecter films, having played Lt. Fisk in Manhunter.

Anthony Heald, who reprised his role as Dr. Frederick Chilton, wore a hair piece to match the hair style he wore in The Silence of the Lambs because at the time of shooting he sported a crew cut while in the TV show Boston Public.

The end of the film leads into the beginning of The Silence of the Lambs. While not explicitly stated, it is implied that Hannibal Lecter's female visitor is Clarice Starling.

Edward Norton used his paycheck to finance his next film, 25th Hour.

Ralph Fiennes' back tattoo took eight hours to apply.

The Chinese character "zhong" seen in the film doesn't actually mean "Red Dragon". It means "center" or "middle". Red Dragon is an odd translation used just in Mah Jong when played in English; in Chinese the tile is called the "center tile".

Although Anthony Hopkins was more than 10 years older than the first time he played this role, the film takes place before the first one. To help make him look younger some of his wrinkles and crow's feet were removed digitally for the close-ups, and he had to lose an substantial amount of weight.

Ethan Hawke was the first choice to play Will Graham.

Frank Langella recorded lines as the Voice of the Dragon, but his dialogue was later cut.

Michael Bay was offered the chance to direct to the film.

Jeremy Piven auditioned for the role of Dolarhyde.

Brett Ratner's first choice for the role of Reba was Téa Leoni.

After the release Anthony Hopkins said this would be his last portrayal of Hannibal Lecter.

Continuity Error: Dolarhyde attempts to break through the bedroom door but stops just after damaging the door jamb. Later, after the shooting, Molly has to break the slats to get to her family, but the door jamb is intact.

Continuity Error: The slash mark across Graham's chest disappears before he is shot.

Error: When Francis is doing bench presses, a camera operator wearing a black t-shirt is reflected in the one of the mirrors.

Continuity Error: The first time we see the "Tooth Fairy"'s tattoos, the rear view clearly shows him to be naked. When he turns around, however, although he is figleafed by a towel, his jockey shorts are visible

Error: The William Blake painting that Francis Dolarhyde eats is said to be titled "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed With the Sun". The painting he actually eats is "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun". The names are very similar, but the paintings are very different.

Error: When Dolarhyde has the reporter captive and speaks closely to him the scar on his upper lip is falling off.

Continuity Error: After Graham finds out the video tapes are what links the victims the aircraft flying at dusk is the outline of a Falcon 2000. The film takes place sometime in the early '80s and the Falcon 2000 was not delivered until March of 1995.

Error: At 82:30 on the DVD, when Lecter is saying, "Clever work on his note, by the way," the camera is reflected in the glass under Lecter's chin.

Continuity Error: When Graham is holding Dolarhydes diary at the end, he is looking at the back of the diary in the first shoot. But in the next it's the front of the diary he looks at.

Error: There is a cord visible when the burning wheelchair is rolling down the street, and is also indicated by a trail of fire left behind it when it has fallen over.

Error: In the scene where Will Graham is going through the Leeds' movie collection, you can see a copy of Mrs. Doubtfire. That film however was not released until 1993, and Red Dragon supposedly takes place in the '80s.

Continuity Error: When Reba pets the sedated tiger her wrist watch says 11:20. When the veterinarian hands Reba a stethoscope moments later, the vet's watch says 12:00.

In the trailers & TV spots for the film, we see Francis Dolarhyde (Ralph Fiennes) say to Graham's son when he opens the door: "Hello, I'm a friend of your father". This did not appear in the film.

Several deleted, alternate, and extended scenes appear on the DVD, including:

Graham watching his son sleep before he leaves

More of Chilton and Graham talking about the procedures taken with Lecter

Graham studying the cat's grave at the Jacobi house

Graham talking to his son about Lecter

Lecter watching the Leeds' family video

Josh confronted by Dolarhyde at the end (this was shown in the trailer)

Lounds recording the message into the tape recorder

An alternate scene of Bowman breaking Lecter's code, this time without him reading out loud like he did in the theatrical version

An alternate scene of Graham, Crawford and the others listening to Lounds on the tape. Now they turn the tape off before Lounds starts screaming

An alternate take of the flaming wheelchair

The Dragon's voice is heard while Dolarhyde is running around his house looking for Reba

An extended scene of Graham in the Leeds' house

More of the scene where Graham has a vision at the Jacobi house of Mrs. Leeds walking around in her bedroom

More of when the janitor finds Dolarhyde's note in Lecter's cell