Red Dragon

Universal Pictures and Dino De Laurentiis presents in association with Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures

Starring: Anthony Hopkins Edward Norton Ralph Fiennes Harvey Keitel Emily Watson and Philip Seymour Hoffman

Directed by: Brett Ratner

Plot: Hannibal the cannibal Lector is captured by a young smart FBI agent(Norton). In the process both of them are hurt and Lector is in jail forever and Norton stops working. Once a serial killer who likes to kill families is on the loose he is asked to return and the only person that can help capture this new killer is a cannibal who would love revenge.

Acting: This movie has the best line up of actors I have seen in a while. Everyone of them does their job perfectly. Lets go over everyone. Hopkins just is Hannibal and the dialogue rolls off his tongue like its as easy as sleeping. Norton adds a bit to this character which is needed. He's not a big action hero he is tired of chasing bad guys but can't help but keep chasing them, I loved him in this movie. Watson was great playing a blind woman who starts to fall for a very evil man and she does an outstanding job. The rest of the cast does more than they should and makes their small characters into stand out one's. It is Fiennes for me that stands out, he is just amazing as this evil man and I think he had fun with this role.

Directing/Writing: Well I read the original book and I saw the first movie made off of it Manhunter. I loved that movie too much that I started to become very negative towards this movie. This script is not Manhunters script and it is a good script but I loved too many factors from the book that they left out of this movie. Bret Ratner who made both Rush Hour's does a OK job with this. The foreshadowing was too thick and too easy to see he did it so much that I knew what was coming by the end of the movie. One thing he can't do is make violence disturbing, in one scene someone is glued to a chair and lit on fire........ I think he does not understand that the violence in these movies is suppose to make the audience look away and hate the bad guy. Instead I almost was laughing seeing the guy GLUED to a chair. Over all his style did not work for me, it was not dark and smooth like Silence of the Lambs was. At least it was not disturbing and stupid like Hannibal. I just think Ratner should stick to what he does best, Action movies, especially one's with Jackie Chan.

Overall: I was sad to see they kept out some good stuff from the book and the fact this movie did not surprise me or even scare me kind of pissed me off. This movie was lucky it got the actors it did, their acting performances saved this movie. Movie did make me hungry though...haha

Stars:***