I like Red Dragon..........but it didn't need to be made. They remade Manhunter for no reason whatsoever.......Manhunter is a great movie. I dare say it is better than Red Dragon. Red Dragon starts slowing down a bit towards the end....but Manhunter doesn't.
They basically re-shot Manhunter scene for scene and added in two or three scenes (flashback to Lechter's dinner party where he serves one of the orchestra members....flashback to his capture....more date scenes with the bad guy and the blind girl)..........
Over all.......Manhunter ranks up there almost equal to Silence of the Lambs......Red Dragon falls short. Another stupid Hollywood remake that never needed to happen.
Originally posted by DeNiro
I luv edward nortons roles he is in so many great movies and he always plays his parts great
Ditto, except I have yet to see "The 25th Hour", just didn't look appealing. (I bought "Helter Skelter", BTW. 😄 )
I think "Red Dragon" is underrated, and just got the short end of the stick, because of "Hannibal" and it's commercial failure. In a way, it seemed like a last ditch effort to save the franchise, by going back in time instead of any furthur with a Clarice spinoff.
Manhunter is the the same movie as Red Dragon..............
except :
1. It is more suspensful
2. The acting is more emotional (not to knock Ed Norton, I love his acting but he doesn't convey deep emotion very well)........
3. The pace doesn't drag like it does in Red Dragon
4. It's an all around better film
Well, I am thinking that people may favor Manhunter moreso if they saw it before "Red Dragon".
Red Dragon had superior casting, especially in Ralph Fiennes as Francis Dollarhyde. They did a horrible job of Dollarhyde's character overall in Manhunter. In what way were we supposed to know he was enduring some sort of self evolution? He talked about it, and had a painting. Wow. Fiennes? He WAS the Red Dragon. He lived it, talked it.
Everyone in Manhunter, aside from always cool Dennis Farina just seemed so flat. Will Graham, especially. Just..monotone in coversation, outside of his dictaphone commentary.
Another thing about Manhunter that bothered me is that they did absolutely nothing with the whole "Oh my god, he has Will Graham's address" piece. They move out the family, and all is well.
Where as in Red Dragon, they actually made something out of the threat, which led to one hell of a suspenseful, twisted ending.
I didn't find any suspense in Manhunter, and I felt as it it crept along, with too much emphasis put on the wrong scenes. The soundtrack, or lack thereof, didn't help much either.
I have always liked Silence of the lambs for this reason the way lecter treats everyone and how he can just pick ur brain with out even having to try.
Now in haniabal you dont get to see this at all which is another reason why the movie sucked. Also that the death of ray was just stupid and sick but funny at times. and i just didnt like it but.
But with Red Dragon now it was creepy wasnt half as dark as silence of the lambs with the james gum guy but this guy franis had his own dark self thinking he was the dragon. U actully did feel a lil sorry for him since i mean his child hood which messed him up mentally but i just luv the cleverness of ed norton and how he found out everything and even at the end made him let go of his son by acting like his grandmother.
I read Hanabial and i tell u what the book is far better.
Everybody likes different movies.............
I like Red Dragon....but I still feel it isn't as good as Manhunter. Red Dragon took a story that was already made......made into a movie.....reshot the movie (almost scene for scene except for a few extra scenes thrown in) with big name actors...........like the story somehow is better now that we have big A-list stars playing the characters.
Red Dragon was sloooooooooow......it carries a decent pace for about an hour, then simply slows to a hobble for about 45 minutes. They spent too much time on the Dollarhyde character. Okay....he is the bad guy. That is the only thing intregal to the plot of the film.....he is the one the good guys are looking to stop. Red Dragon spends too much time boring the audience to tears with his story.........it's almost a side story that is just thrown into the existing story. It's like the movie swerves off path just to tell us more about him...which kills the pace that has already been established. Manhunter got to the point.....he is a bad guy. They established that well without having Dollarhyde going to the art museum......or taking the blind girl to "see" the tiger.....giving us more insight to the character. He is not the central character....so much time should not have been devoted to him, it killed the second half of the movie. That little side trip just threw the movie off balance.
Manhunter was an excellent film that spawned an excellent sequel (Silence of the Lambs).........it's obvious that Hannibal was made purely for money as it lacks greatly in the plot department.............and Red Dragon was aswell as the story had already been told in a terrific manner. They simply wanted to re-make the movie with A-list actors for the same reason they made Hannibal......not because they needed to, simply because they thought they could make an extra dollar. Red Dragon is an insult to Manhunter. It's not an insult because it was a bad movie, it wasn't. It's an insult because they basically said, "that little movie Manhunter wasn't good enough....didn't tell a good story so we're going to remake it"........it's not like the movie was out of date as in the case of most remakes where they wait 30 years to remake it to modernize it...........Red Dragon was a slap in the face to every single person who worked on Manhunter.........which I find funny since they thought the movie had turned out so well that they decided to make a sequel to it.