The Flesh-Eating Doctor is Now After Your Moral Soul

A film review of Red Dragon, originally printed in Brown University/RISD College Hill Independent

HOLLYWOOD DIRECTOR Brett Ratner is a disappointment to contemporary cinema. I love the movies. I hate what Ratner does to them. He hits a new low and I hit a new high in hate with his latest film, Red Dragon. This is Ratner's version of the ongoing saga of the man-eating and occasionally man-hunting Dr. Hannibal "The Cannibal" Lecter (Anthony Hopkins), the brilliant, always hungry, and usually incarcerated former psychiatrist.

Soul Asylum

In the latest episode, FBI agent Will Graham (Edward Norton) is on the trail of a serial killer nicknamed the Tooth Fairy (Ralph Fiennes). Graham's boss, Crawford (Harvey Keitel), suggests that the investigation might benefit from the input of Lecter. Red Dragon derives pleasure from watching Lecter's manipulations of Graham in their intense one-on-one confrontations. In addition, the film attempts an exploration of the serial killer himself. The film follows the Tooth Fairy in his natural skin-he's actually lonely video lab technician Francis Dolarhyde, a victim of child abuse who currently finds himself falling for his blind co-worker Reba (Emily Watson).

Though he may have some sensitive bones in his body, the Tooth Fairy is still one of America's Most Wanted. His prime targets are picture-perfect white suburban middle-class families. Although thankfully sparing the viewer scenes that might actually show the killer at work, Ratner's film happily presents its audience with gruesome photos of the victims' dead bodies and an oral account by Graham of the Tooth Fairy's procedure that are just as nauseating.

Soul Train

Surprisingly, the true moments of bad taste do not involve the central crimes at all. Rather, they involve the subplot in which the audience is invited to examine the serial killer's "human" side. The film has the audacity to propel Reba into a sexual relationship with the Tooth Fairy in scenes that actually brought me to near nausea. The scene depicting Dolarhyde receiving oral sex from Reba is beyond sickening-it's perverted.

The film also features a journalist who is glued to a wheelchair and lit on fire, a man shot dead at point blank range, Dolarhyde running around naked sporting a massive, creepy tattoo on his back, and a blade of glass pointed at a young boy's forehead. If you emerge from this movie without feeling dirty and morally corrupted, you must have been asleep during most of it.

More frightening than the film's plot is its complete lack of artistic purpose or moral perspective. The movie cannot claim to be a serious examination of the psychotic mind because the audience is presented with a killer whose psychotic state is readily and easily attributed to the abuse he suffered at the hands of his brutal grandmother. Red Dragon has nothing original to say about the world of a psycho killer-but is this really territory that we would want to explore anyway? Whether or not Red Dragon will admit its selling point, it's obvious to the audience: we get to learn about the crimes perpetrated by a serial killer and then we get to watch this crazy bad guy go down gruesomely with a bullet to the brain.

Red Dragon shocks the audience with brutality, a goal that carries no artistic or moral weight. Rather, it is a shameful ploy to appeal to the same part of the human mind that is unfortunately turned on by watching reality television programs featuring people who stick their faces in bowls of worms in search of a hundred dollar bill.

Soul Coughing

If the gore doesn't damage your moral fiber, certainly the frightening lack of moral perspective will corrupt your character. Ratner hurls images of grotesque brutality onto the screen without a care in the world. The inclusion of the serial killer's romance with Reba may remind the viewer that psychos are humans too, but so what? Are we supposed to forgive him his violent crimes? Are they less evil than they initially seem?

The most sickening aspect of the Lecter movies in general is that this insane, flesh-eating doctor is beloved by his audience. We laugh at his jokes. We delight in seeing him outsmart the nasty prison psychiatrist. We forgive him for trying to kill the movie's hero, which he attempts to do midway through the film. In reality, Lecter is pure evil and deserving of none of our sympathies. In the movie, his is a misunderstood, mistreated rascal-the slightly crazier twin to James Dean's "rebel without a cause." The audience emerges from the film with a warped moral character as a result of the director's treatment of the repulsive Lecter.

Soul, man

Who is to blame for this mess of a movie that not only fails to entertain but actually eats away at the brain? The prime candidate is the director, Ratner, who has emerged as a hot commodity in Hollywood after the box office success of his Rush Hour films. Quoted in Variety magazine, Ratner is a man who blatantly admits to cribbing from such second-rate but profitable action pictures like 48 Hours and Midnight Run when he made the Rush Hour movies. He uses his voluminous knowledge of films as a fallback when making his own. "I am very aware of my limitations," he says. Not only does Ratner lack talent, but his every brain synapse is wired to the chime of the bells that begin day trading on Wall Street. On the topic of Manhunter, Michael Mann's stylish and highly praised adaptation of the same book on which Red Dragon is based, Ratner said, "That movie did $6 million at the box office and in terms of the marketplace right now, nobody has seen it except fans like me and you."

In truth, Ratner's films are the ones that are underwhelming. Devoid of originality and creative expression, they are factory produced, sealed, and marketed. But more importantly, a film such as Red Dragon can actually have a negative effect on its audience, desensitizing viewers to violence and corrupting their sense of morality by offering forgiving images of serial killers. The movies will continue to cannibalize any magic they still exude until someone has the guts to poke a fork in Lecter and end this torment. I'll gladly take a stab at the heart.