Manhunter - 1986
Directed by: Michael Mann

Red Dragon - 2002
Directed by: Brett Ratner

I saw Manhunter during its initial release in 1986, and I had just read the novel from which it was adapted, Thomas Harris's Red Dragon. I didn't care for it at first because the book was still vivid in my mind, and I was expecting a movie that, like the book, was dark and grim. To be precise, I was expecting Manhunter to look and feel the way Red Dragon, another adaptation of the same novel, looked and felt. But now, having seen the most recent version, I prefer the first one.

I've learned that it's always a mistake to read the book just before I watch a movie. I made the same mistake with Tony Scott's 1983 adaptation of Whitley Strieber's The Hunger — I didn't like that movie at first, either, but now it's among my favorites. I expected to see the book, and that simply never happens (unless you count Chris Columbus's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, which was so slavishly faithful to the novel, it ended up being awkward and lumbering). A novel is a novel, and a movie is a movie — they're different beasts and must be taken on their own terms.

Brett Ratner's Red Dragon comes sixteen years after Michael Mann's Manhunter, and if you've seen the earlier one, it's pretty hard to forget about it while you watch the new one, it's only natural.

The first time I saw Manhunter, I was expecting dark and creepy, but got something very different. I had the same problem then that a lot of people I know still have with the movie. This problem has been dubbed the Miami Vice Look. I couldn't see beyond that, and the movie didn't stand a chance on that first viewing. But it stayed with me. There were scenes and shots that haunted me. When it became available on video, I watched it again. The second time, I focused on the movie itself, and I was very impressed.

Former FBI agent Will Graham (William L. Petersen, currently appearing in CBS's CSI: Crime Scene Investigation) is brought out of retirement to help find a serial killer dubbed the "Tooth Fairy" (Tom Noonan) because he's a biter. Graham has a talent for getting inside the heads of serial killers and thinking like them. To regain the mindset, he pays a visit to the incarcerated Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Brian Cox), an infamous killer and cannibal caught by Graham. Lecter and the Tooth Fairy begin a correspondence that ends up putting Graham's wife and son in danger.

There's just no denying the stylistic resemblances to Mann's hip cop show. But let's not forget he created that style, and it was extremely influential in the 1980s — there were a lot of movies in the '80s that had that look. Watching it now, with Miami Vice little more than a distant memory (if I'm not mistaken, it was still on the air in 1986), it's not as intrusive. It's an '80s movie in much the same way, say, Rosemary's Baby is a '60s movie, and twenty years from now, we'll be saying the same thing about movies made in this decade — but that has nothing to do with their quality.

It's a shame that some people can't get beyond Manhunter's visual style, because if you do, you'll find that it's an ambitious, edgy, suspenseful picture with vision. Mann creates and maintains an unnerving sense of urgency with the help of Dov Hoenig's tense editing, and hard-driving music by Shriekback, Iron Butterfly (In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida's drum solo has never been this scary — and that's saying a lot), and others. Tom Noonan's Francis Dolarhyde is one of the all-time great movie villains. As monstrous as he is, there are glimpses of the human being behind those cold eyes, one who's in a great deal of pain. We see just enough to give Dolarhyde some depth. Just enough so that, when Dolarhyde says, "Francis is gone forever," we believe it, and we shudder.

The things that haunted me after my first viewing of Manhunter are just as strong today: The movie's opening shots of a flashlight shining on a couple as they sleep in bed, and the confused, disoriented look on the woman's face when she wakes and sits up; the jittery flashlight beam going up some stairs in the dark; the unsettling Dr. Lecter (Brian Cox, the first actor to play this role, is a real stand-out here) in his sterile-white cell saying to Graham, "Would you like to leave me your home phone number?"; Graham explaining to his young son his experience with Lecter; the pain in Dolarhyde's eyes as he lies in bed beside a blind woman with her hand on his face; an enraged Dolarhyde's hand ripping out the dashboard in his van; the nightmarish climactic confrontation between Dolarhyde and Graham.

Five years after Manhunter's release, Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar when he made the role of Hannibal Lecter his own in Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs. It was followed by Ridley Scott's bloody train wreck of a movie, Hannibal (to be fair, Scott's movie was based on a train wreck of a novel by Harris), in which Hopkins reprised his role. Red Dragon is a "prequel," made, it seems, with the single ambition of looking as much like Silence of the Lambs as possible.

It's not a bad movie. It's entertaining, never boring. But I would have enjoyed it much more had I not seen Manhunter first. Or, I might have enjoyed it more if Red Dragon made some effort to be more than what it is: A big, glossy studio movie with a fat budget and a stellar cast (Anthony Hopkins, Edward Norton, Harvey Keitel, Ralph Feinnes, Emily Watson, Mary-Louise Parker, Phillip Seymour Hoffman), with all the things you expect from such a movie, including a contrived ending — they even blow up a house. I couldn't shake the feeling that Red Dragon was made mostly to give Hopkins a chance to play Hannibal Lecter again.

Anthony Hopkins's role has been expanded in Red Dragon. The movie begins with a prologue in which we get to see what life was like for Hannibal Lecter before his run-in with the law. And we get to see that run-in, which almost kills Graham. It's a very satisfying opening, and I admit it's a pleasure to see Hopkins at it again, even though his Lecter has come dangerously close to self-parody. Red Dragon has more of Lecter, and more of everything else, too. It's leisurely pace lacks the sense of urgency I found in Manhunter, but there are suspenseful moments. Those moments are not helped by Danny Elfman's surprisingly uninspired score.

The biggest disappointments in the movie are Edward Norton's somnambulistic performance as Will Graham — I never believed for a moment that Norton was a troubled man with a dark side — and screenwriter Ted Tally's (Silence of the Lambs) treatment of Francis Dolarhyde. We get a look at what made Dolarhyde the way he is — a sadistic grandmother who tormented him as a boy (Grandma Dolarhyde's voice is provided by the uncredited Ellen Burstyn). The pain we get glimpses of in Manhunter is explained here, making Dolarhyde more pathetic than scary.

Although it's a solidly made movie, there is a weariness to Red Dragon, because we've seen it all before, and in many ways, we've seen it done better. In spite of its pedigree, it's pretty forgetable.

However, I know some people who prefer the remake. You might want to do what I did — watch the movies back to back. I would be interested to know how you feel once you've seen both. In my next column, I'll run some of your e-mail responses.

[Drop Ray a line and let him know your thoughts about the films. Send your e-mails here.]

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Red Dragon

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