Here's a prediction: Many more people will see Red Dragon in its opening weekend than saw the perfectly fine 1986 version called Manhunter in any format. Though that Michael Mann-directed film was generally ignored by audiences and critics, who shrugged it off as "something that Miami Vice guy made" (because it was stylish and chock-full of dumb synthesizer music), Manhunter did amass a bit of a cult following, especially when its sequel, Silence of the Lambs, became the first film in decades to abscond with the top five Oscar trophies.

In retrospective, one of the things that made Manhunter so cool (and, strangely, the main reason Hollywood insisted on remaking it) was the lack of scenes with Hannibal Lecter.  Played by Scottish actor Brian Cox, Lecter appeared in just three scenes and certainly was not the driving force behind the film.  Here, Lecter is once again portrayed by Anthony Hopkins (Bad Company), and his salary for donning the straightjacket a third time is more than double what Manhunter made at the box office.  Hopkins's Lecter has much more screen time than Cox's did, and – worse yet – this third turn is the campiest of the lot, with the lovable-antihero-turned-disappointing-caricature spouting one-liners like he was Vin Freakin' Diesel.

Dragon opens in 1980 Baltimore with a scene depicting the capture of noted forensic psychologist Lecter at the hands of FBI agent Will Graham (Edward Norton, Death to Smoochy).  Without going into the gory details, they're both badly injured and, as the opening credits roll, the former is tried, convicted and sentenced to multiple life terms, while the latter recovers and retires to Florida (the capture of Lecter was added as a prologue to Thomas Harris's re-released novel).  Flash forward an unspecified amount of time, where FBI boss Jack Crawford (Harvey Keitel, Little Nicky) flies down to the Sunshine State in an attempt to get Graham to help the Bureau out on a whopper of a case.

It seems that during the last two full moons a serial killer has slaughtered families in Atlanta and Birmingham.  Despite the apprehension of his wife (Mary-Louise Parker, The Five Senses), Graham agrees to spend a week on the case and takes off to investigate the crime scenes (in the dark, natch) while noting his observations into a pocket tape recorder. While Graham spins his wheels, Crawford suggests he run the case by the incarcerated Lecter, which sets off the whole young-agent-talking-to-the-criminal-genius-through-the-protective-glass thing we all loved in Lambs.

Graham's race to the next full moon, fueled by Lecter's tidbits, leads to a very original story involving a horny blind woman (Emily Watson, Gosford Park), her hare-lipped boyfriend (a bulked-up Ralph Fiennes, The End of the Affair) and a rumpled tabloid reporter (Philip Seymour Hoffman, Almost Famous) who dubs the killer "the Tooth Fairy" because of his penchant for biting.  If you've read the book, or seen the original version of the film, you might not be on the edge of your seat, but everyone else should be. With such a great story and a stellar, star-studded cast, there is very little to complain about, other than the over-the-top explosion in the pre-finale finale, and the temporary disappearance of Graham in the film's second half. Oh, and the fact it didn't really need to be remade in the first place.

I had major reservations going into Dragon, and they were all rooted in one issue:  Director Brett Ratner, the non-award-winning director of Rush Hour, Money Talks and The Family Man.  How a movie franchise could go from Mann (three Oscar nominations) to Jonathan Demme (one win) to Ridley Scott (three noms) to Ratner was beyond anything I could comprehend.  But my concerns were mostly unfounded.  It turns out when you have this many talented people in front of and behind the camera, even a monkey could look like a genius.  For the record, Dragon plays a lot more like Lambs than Hannibal did, mostly because of the return of the likes of screenwriter Ted Tally and production designer Kristi Zea. Adding to the mix are scoremeister Danny Elfman and cinematographer Dante Spinotti, who ironically, was the photographer for Manhunter, a film that launched the careers of then-unknown Chicago-based actors William Peterson, Joan Allen and Dennis Farina.

2:10 –

for violence, grisly images, language, some nudity and sexuality