Let's get the basics out of the way so we can get on to the good stuff.

This is a very divided film. On the one hand, Ratner's storytelling is strictly by the numbers, recalling the ungraceful editing of Manhunter, while on the other some of the performances are quite good, focusing on the human aspects of Harris' and Tally's broad characters. Hopkins is solid in Lecter's now-familiar shoes, aided by the perfect replication of sets from Silence. Edward Norton works surprisingly well as investigator Will Graham. His boyishness left me in doubt at first, but Ratner uses it to play into Tally's idea of the vulnerable hero, as previously seen via Jodie Foster in Silence. Philip Seymour Hoffman brings a humanity to the tabloid reporter Freddie Lounds, aka the Persistent Desire to See Bad Things. Hoffman's Lounds is a downtrodden, pathetic character at the lower end of the human spectrum, but he blossoms into a sympathetic, pitiable victim when played into the killer's hands.

The film opens with a blocky prologue showing how Will Graham simultaneously caught and was victimized by Lecter. It gets the info across but also sets a workmanlike and inelegant tone. A couple of little things from the prologue: Lecter with a pony tail in the slicked-back 80's yuppie style? No. And a prop thing — the handwriting that purports to be Lecter's in the book Graham finds is all wrong. Lecter would never need to write in a book and if he did, the writing wouldn't be that unrefined scrawl. Are these trivial details? To some, but they also indicate that Ratner didn't have enough of a handle on a major character to reject a detail like that. But the sequence is useful, because in it Graham and Lecter relate as equals; it's the strongest scene between the two.

We move on to a newspaper headline montage that's intended to recall the opening from Seven, but instead more closely resembles the lurid, cartoonish "Hush Hush" montage that leads off LA Confidential. The film follows the now-retired Graham as he's coerced back into the FBI by Jack Crawford (Harvey Keitel, providing key support) to help the Bureau find the Tooth Fairy, a calculating killer of families. In doing so, Graham gets more and more involved with the case, ultimately recruiting the help of Hannibal Lecter before coming to the attention of the Tooth Fairy via the antics of Freddie Lounds. Meanwhile, our killer, Francis Dollarhyde (Ralph Fiennes, fighting being directed into stiffness, saddled with facial applications) is finding love with Reba McClaine (Emily Watson) and questioning whether or not he needs to go on with his process of transformation, enacted through murder.

Lets also get this out of the way: Red Dragon is not about Hannibal Lector. Just get over it. All of this Cult of Hannibal crap is occasionally entertaining, but there was a time when he was just a very good way to get across the fact that Will Graham and Clarice Starling have to wallow in the mud in order to do their jobs. Lector is a wonderful image of America coming out of the eighties and in Silence he knows exactly what his audience (Starling, and us) wants and refuses to give it up, something that Ridley Scott and now Brett Ratner should have heeded. Jonathan Demme exercised an incredible restraint when making The Silence of the Lambs, leaving out a lot of the gore that Harris threw around. Brett Ratner falls victim to the Cult of Hannibal when he delivers the gore; he doesn't know when it's useful and when it becomes exploitation.