A remake of Manhunter, 1986, for the sole purpose of instating the "real" Hannibal Lecter -- Anthony Hopkins -- in the role. (It would have been simpler, if it would have been technologically possible, to cut-and-paste him digitally into the pre-existing film, obliterating Brian Cox.) And never mind that the aging, thickening, thinning-haired actor is here supposed to be younger than he was when he first assumed the role, over a decade earlier. Given that The Silence of the Lambs, 1991, was itself essentially a re-do of Manhunter -- the incarcerated psychopath assisting the FBI on a serial-murder case -- the opportunities for déjà vu are manifold. The preludial explanation of how Hannibal the Cannibal initially got himself incarcerated seems a good place to start, and a few seconds before Jodie Foster walks into his life seems an obvious place to stop. (The actual climax -- not the false climax but the de rigueur follow-up climax -- is sufficiently well-staged to excuse its triteness.) Of course, as a mere consultant on the case, our ingratiating anthropophagite is not on screen for very many minutes; and the winner of the hot competition for most close-ups is no doubt Edward Norton as the empathic FBI profiler formerly played by William Petersen. It might not seem so, however, because the diffident Norton never scores as heavily from close range as does the taunting Hopkins or the tortured Ralph Fiennes, who misses the pathos that Tom Noonan put into the "Tooth Fairy Killer" in Manhunter. Another telling point of comparison with the earlier version -- perhaps the single most telling -- is the photography: the slick and polished image of Manhunter as against the rough, abraded image of Red Dragon. The photographer, curiously, was the same for each: Dante Spinotti. The difference, one surmises, must be the director: the preening Michael Mann versus the slovenly Brett Ratner. With Emily Watson, Mary-Louise Parker, Harvey Keitel, Philip Seymour Hoffman. (2002) — Duncan Shepherd