Thanks for the memories!

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

A lot of perfectly good film show their cards early, establish a unique premise and let the audience explore a topic at a leisurely pace, without much in terms of surprise. this film is not one of those films.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

I always felt this was more on par with SOTL than the other two films and better than its original 'Manhunter'. Once again kudos has to go to the killer being hunter, Ralph Feinnes pulled off a great character here. Nice little links as a prequel to SOTL and a great introduction to Will Graham for the box set series.Great plot, enjoyable characters.

Red Dragon is the prequel to the 1991 classic, The Silence Of The Lambs. Red Dragon is about an FBI agent named Will Graham (Edward Norton) who is investigating a murder pulled off by a notorious killer known as The Tooth Fairy (Ralph Fiennes), and seeks advice from his old friend and imprisoned cannibal, Doctor Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins). Ralph Fiennes totally steals the show with his performance of The Tooth Fairy, a killer who suffered psychological damage as a child from years of abuse from his mother, who is voiced by Ellen Burstyn. He is pure evil, but was transformed into a monster from the abuse he suffered, not born one. Without question, Ralph Fiennes delivers the strongest performance in the whole film. While the film has an an amazing all star cast and great acting, Red Dragon just doesn't deliver the dark, eerie, ominous vibe that The Silence Of The Lambs did, and the story just didn't really pull me in at all. Also, I didn't like the ending at all, to me it felt forced, and was extremely cheesy. The Silence Of The Lambs is one of my favorite crime thrillers of all time, so I had high expectations for this film, yet was left feeling a bit disappointed. Red Dragon is a very well acted film, yet doesn't even come close to The Silence Of The Lambs in terms of creepiness, and the story just isn't all that interesting. I am recommending it for the amazing performances, but I feel the story could have been much better. 6.5/10.

"Red Dragon" is a movie for all those that want to know the story behind one of the most popular villains in modern cinema. It matches the tone of its elder brother, benefiting from the ongoing portrayal of Dr. Hannibal Lecter by Anthony Hopkins. It works very well for fans of his universe and provides some further background to gain an impression of how this fragile cooperation initiated in the first place.What impresses me more is that it also works well for people that don't know the older movie at the time of viewing. Of course it is always easier to place a second movie before the first, trying to make it accessible as easily as possible. And of course the movie loses some layers if you don't get the plot between the lines. But apart from all that, what we see enrolling here is nothing else than an exceptional thriller.To me, creating such is always quite a task. It sometimes feels like we've seen everything in this genre, and very rarely a movie really stands out of the flood of solid thriller movies that are ongoing produced year after another. "Red dragon" achieves so in providing more. An additional side story, brilliant acting, a believable villain and the result that bad and evil are not always contrary but sometimes share a body.While this is not a creative movie in terms of presenting anything never seen before or after it clearly holds its promises. I recommend a watch and I believe not many viewers will find this one really bad.

So if you're wondering why I covered the sequel to this first, it's because I thought this was a sequel to "Silence of the Lambs", not the other way around. Either way, this is a great prequel, it still manages to capture a lot of the suspense that the previous film had, but it's more about mind games. Norton has to practically beat Lecter at his own game, which is no small feat. All the performances are great, I've yet to see Edward Norton have a bad role (sure I didn't like "American History X", but his performance was great). Everything works in this for me. Is it better than "Silence of the Lambs"? No, but there's still a lot of things to love about it.