| Red Dragon When one visits a theater to be entertained for an evening of cinematic delight there are a couple of factors that can make or brake said experience. The company one finds themselves in. Good snacks. Quality sound and picture. And most importantly a movie worth waiting 1 ½ years for… cause that’s how long it had been since my last outing to a theater. The company was fine, as in direct company. Dude and I had last gone to the cinema about two years prior to see Hannibal, a movie that proved to be a treat for the laughing muscles. So when Red Dragon made it’s way to a our city it was an obvious choice who I would see it with. As I said, dude was good company. But then there is the indirect company one is always confronted with. The other punters in town if you will. These people can be great; laughing where laughter is due, screaming where fear allows for it, but most importantly they will refrain from giving commentary. Basically they should, just like myself, sit there in their seats and enjoy the story unfolding on the big screen. Grade C- Snacks are an integral part heading out for a movie. One cannot sit through a showing without wanting to munch on something. Some people like M&M’s with or without the peanuts, others need jellybeans, some just need a Coke. Myself I have always been prone to chomping down a big bucket of popcorn and washing this down with some kind of refreshment. In this case I went for the big ass bucket of corn, salted with no butter, and one large cup ‘o sprite. The seats were comfy, the placing near perfect… the sprite was cold and frothy. But the corn… the corn was salty, very salty. And that sucks for there isn’t something worse then salty popped corn that makes your mouth twinge to uncomfortable proportions! Grade D This particular theater we went to had been built a couple of months ago, one of them megaplexes where the latest blockbusters are aired 5-6 times a night ensuring near constant availability. This also means that, unless the owner is a cheapskate mofo, the sound installation should be divine. The THX causing your head to spin to dizzying proportions, and your rump to shake each time the subwoofer woofs out 2.3 gazillion megawatts! My poor ears, they were bleeding. Bonus, however, being the fact that the chatter from in-direct company was flooded out. Grade A- But a movie isn’t sound alone. You need a picture to go with the movie, if not I might as well go and experience a symphony blasting out Mahler or some such thing. I have a widescreen tv, I have a dvd player, I have an SSS. Quality on all three counts is great, but nothing beats heading to the cinema to watch a story unfold on a big screen… unless the camera guy wears bifocals and forgot which bi of the focals he needed to look through. Nearsighted bastard made me watch a movie in slight fuzz, and I believe the movie stock had spend a night in a sauna cause the color schematics where a little off too (or that was the DP’s way of making this movie seem like a timepiece as the story takes place late ‘70s early ‘80s… juding from the fashion and lovely cars). Grade D+ Which brings me to the movie, Red Dragon. Fourth installment of a trilogy, this being the first chapter. For those of you who haven’t seen this flick yet I warn thee that I shall be spoiling all the fun in the coming paragraphs and thus advice you to stop reading. Hope you enjoyed the intro… I had planned on taking with me a notepad to jot down certain parts of interest, but I am a lazy bastard and forewent the whole idea. And a good thing too as I would have spend more time writing then actually watching the movie! Amuse bouche… what a wonderfull line, and great way of describing the movie I might add. For those of you oblivious to the term, an amuse bouche is a French term meaning cocktail appetizer; something to titillate your tonsils… leave it to the French. But I get sidetracked. Red Dragon is where the whole cannibalistic story of our favorite bad man Dr. Lector begins. Lector, for those of you who don’t know this already, is a renowned forensic psychiatrist who just loves his classical music. The movie opens during a performance of some classical music, a flute player not doing what he should be doing which creates the needless stress with our herr doktor. Next scene, an intimate diner at Lector’s house where the phrase “amuse bouche” is uttered. Members of the dining group not knowing that they are amuzing their bouche with the same flutist whom just minutes earlier was being berated for his bad playing… but where was the chianti? A scene later we are introduced to Ed Norton, protagonist of this installment. He plays an FBI detective, Will Graham, who is trying to solve a serial killer case with the help of Lector. Questions asked, answers given, dimes starting to drop, knife in body, arrow in other body, shot shot bang bang and voila; Lector is caught! Years later, Graham has recuperated from his gunshot wounds and is living in Florida where he fixes outboard engines for a living. Enter his old boss from the bureau days, Harvey Keitel, who asks him for help as they (the feds) are trying to catch a serial killer named the “Tooth Fairy” (Ralph Fiennes, but we don’t know that yet). Graham is all “I don’t know, cause all this psychic getting into head stuff nearly ruined my life last time”. Keitel (who’s character name I have forgotten, and that is why I should have taken along a notepad) is all “come on, for old times sake, I will buy you a slurpee!!!” Graham is all “okiedokie”. And thus we are in business. Along the way Graham realizes that he can’t solve the mystery by himself and asks good ol Lector for help. We are introduced to a yellow journalist portrayed by Philip Seymour Hoffman who in the past was “mean” to Graham, they have a little lovers quarrel, but later pretend to make up when he, Seymour, is granted an exclusive interview regarding the whole tooth fairy case. Backtracking real fast, the tooth fairy is played by Fiennes, his name being derived from the fact that he leaves tooth imprints in his victims (and other assorted goodies). We find out that Fiennes character was abused by his American Gothic granny who sported funky fake chompers… you guessed it, the tooth imprints he leaves behind. Seems that Fiennes was a bed wetter as a child and granny didn’t like cleaning up behind him all the time, so she threatened to cut off mr Johnson should he do it again… and thus a freak is born. This freak thinks that he is evolving into a dragon, a red dragon, and has this fascination with a painting by a dude who painted it 200+ years ago (damnit, next time I plan on doing a review I swear I will bring along a notepad! And a pen…). Trackforward, Seymour is caught by Fiennes, who proceeds to give him the exclusive interview he always thought he wanted. Then he proceeds to bite off his lips (Fiennes doing this to Seymour that is) while he is glued to a wheelchair (Seymour, not Fiennes that is… cause the other way around would make no sense). Wheelchair is set on fire and hurled towards the FBI building, chuckles throughout the audience… and that was probably the scariest thing about the movie. The fact that the audience is laughing out loud as some poor sod is screamin in pain while glued to a wheelchair that has been doused in gasoline and set alight. What is wrong with people? The movie continues, story evolves, a little romance between Fiennes and a blind woman, eventually we are tricked into believing that the Dragon commits suicide by blowing his head off with a shotgun (blind woman not seeing evil, falls for beast who in turn falls for blind woman and can’t kill her…)… then the manor explodes (I know, many gaps, but I don’t get paid to do this so there!), something that I still don’t understand. I mean, when I say explodes I mean EXPLODES! As in the whole house. BOOM. Gone. No reason given! No hidden oil well under the house, or a major gas leak. Nada. Just a big bang, like the universe is being created again… but let’s not dwell on that. There is a build up of excitement, then Fiennes manages to make it to Graham’s house so that he can kill the whole family as per instruction given to him by Lector earlier in the movie. But as with all movies, the good guy has to win and the bad guy has to die (or be send to jail where they will rot till they die, or manage to escape so that we can look forward to a sequel!). End of Story. But not end of this piece. I thought that Red Dragon was a nice movie, not great, nice. During the duration of the film I thought I was watching a remake of Silence of the Lambs, just with a slight plot change. It was a thriller again, instead of the pseudo slasher we all encountered in Hannibal. Hopkins again gave us a brilliant performance as the psychopathic Lector, almost a carbon copy of his oscar winning performance during the sequel. Norton was great. As a matter of fact, I caught the movie Manhunter (the original Red Dragon that bombed ano 1986) and I was freaked out by the chilling similarities to his acting performance compared to the one given by William L. Peterson (famous again via CSI… on tv) all those years ago. You could sense his fear of getting to close into the mind of the killer… great performance. Fiennes… let’s just say that he got really close to being a dragon. Stellar, freaky, and definitely schizo performance! Keitel… hmmmm… of all the actors in this movie, he seemed to be the one reciting his lines, yet still managed to give a good performance. Seymour. What can one say about PSH? The man deserves a leading role, but will never get one. Which is a shame cause I believe he is one of the better actors his generation has brought forth… but oh well, people want to see that idiot Affleck. Come bleat with me yea lethargic sheep! The rest of the cast was also very good… basically this movie can be summed up by solid performances all around. But you also need a good story line, preferably something original. You need sountracks, humor, action, suspense, maybe some naked lesbians mud wrestling… I dunno. Something. Grade B- I guess it is safe to say that Red Dragon is another addition in the tradition of the exhibition of an intellectual thriller trying to throw us off balance and keep us on the edge of our seat. But it has been done before, and probably will be done again. And like the past, so shall we find ourselves in the future waiting in line to catch a movie which we hope will wow us… at the same time munching on some snacks, sucking on a straw, hoping that the crowd will not be a loud one and that the projectionist visited his optometrist earlier that day… Amuse bouche… but no liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti!!! ….efinitely schizo performance! Keitel… hmmmm… of all the actors in this movie, he seemed to be the one reciting his lines, yet still managed to give a good performance. Seymour. What can one say about PSH? The man deserves a leading role, but will never get one. Which is a shame cause I believe he is one of the better actors his generation has brought forth… but oh well, people want to see that idiot Affleck. Come bleat with me yea lethargic sheep! The rest of the cast was also very good… basically this movie can be summed up by solid performances all around. But you also need a good story line, preferably something original. You need sountracks, humor, action, suspense, maybe some naked lesbians mud wrestling… I dunno. Something. Grade B- I guess it is safe to say that Red Dragon is another addition in the tradition of the exhibition of an intellectual thriller trying to throw us off balance and keep us on the edge of our seat. But it has been done before, and probably will be done again. And like the past, so shall we find ourselves in the future waiting in line to catch a movie which we hope will wow us… at the same time munching on some snacks, sucking on a straw, hoping that the crowd will not be a loud one and that the projectionist visited his optometrist earlier that day… Amuse bouche… but no liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti!!! |