It’s not often—okay, it’s never happened—that I finish a book and see the film adaptation the same day. Very interesting—a little strange, in fact— experience.

So I finished Thomas Harris’ Red Dragon. The “double” ending suffered for me not from any fault of logic in the book, but from the too many films I’ve seen in which the bad guy ISN’T REALLY DEAD AFTER ALL! That said, I liked that Molly was forced to be Dolarhyde’s executioner; that worked with the logic of the story and the characters very well. The very end fell a little flat for me, too, in that Harris was trying to wrap it all up with a grand theme which for some reason didn’t work for me. I think it was a little too vague for me to be powerful. He does better communicating theme through how his characters act and what they say.

But then there’s the movie. (If you haven’t seen it and care about walking in a virgin, stop right here.) As an adaptation, I think the director Ratner and writer Tally did a solid job. Not nearly as good as was done for Manhunter, but as a stand-alone movie, better than average. I recognize why for time compression certain parts of the book were left out or condensed, but I thought overall the film moved too quickly to achieve its principle goals, mainly expressing the frustration at figuring out Dolarhyde’s m.o., and also catching Dolarhyde’s crucial dichotomy. I think changing Graham’s personal dynamic with Molly and her son was a big mistake, too, though, because it helped as much as anything to define Graham’s personality and situation. (Plus it just set up even more the significance of Molly’s actions at the very end regarding Dolarhyde.)

My biggest beef is with the casting, though. Odd at first blush, I know, because it’s obviously a great cast of actors, and ones I really like; I just didn’t buy them in these particular roles (or at least with the direction they received from Ratner). Most especially I didn’t buy Norton as Graham, as I knew I wouldn’t. Norton always does at least a good job, but he wasn’t old enough, damaged enough, or bitter enough to be Graham. Graham is an old, tortured, moody soul and Norton is just too young and played him too eagerly for my taste. William Peterson was just damn near perfect for that role in Manhunter. (I should just say right here that everyone in Manhunter was better cast than anyone in Red Dragon, with the exception—probably—of Hopkins.) Hopkins scaled down nicely from Hannibal, but he was still too aware that he was playing The Role. Still a little too self-conscious and hammy for me. I do think Ralph Fiennes was a damn good cast for Dolarhyde, and he plays it well, but I think he needed more time to develop than the movie allowed. Plus, almost as important, he wasn’t ugly enough. Ultimately it’s his facial disfigurement which puts him on his destructive path, and he has … a bad scar on his lip. I understood from the book that his nose was f-d up, too, and he’d had failed surgery using sixty-year-old techniques. I mean, there’s a reason the other kids called him “c*** face”: His face is a hard thing to look at. Fiennes wasn’t hard to look at. He just looked too pretty still in the movie for that to be the momentous, singular motivation it was supposed to be. (Compared to Manhunter, though, which on this subject broke—nay, achieved orbit—from its almost obsessive faithfulness to the book, Red Dragon is the Word of God.)

As for the minor characters, Emily Watson did a good job as Reba, but they made the Reba character weaker than she was in the book, which hurt the story for me because it was largely that attitude that made her relationship with Dolarhyde possible. She had attitude in the book that she lacked in the film. (And a minor quibble: Someone needs to tell actors that blind people don’t walk around looking perpetually amazed.) The worst casting choice, though, in my opinion, was Philip Seymour Hoffman for Lounds. I like Hoffman okay, but I thought he was completely wrong for Lounds not only physically but in demeanor as well. Lounds in the book is an old, gruff, aggressively desperate almost con man, an irritating, insinuating firecracker, not the young, mumbling sloth as portayed by Hoffman. As for Crawford, Keitel’s too … big, somehow, for that role. Not subtle enough, I guess. Crawford’s a poker player of men; Keitel’s … well, he’s a Bad Lieutenant. Like Jason says, he’s a tough guy.

So overall—I am mixed. It was a good movie—I’d probably give it probably 7, maybe 6, out of 10 stars (following the IMDB system)—but I’d have to say I’m a little disappointed in the adaptation. I just don’t feel like it captured the spirit of the book or the characters nearly as well as it could have. I can’t stop thinking about who I would have chosen as a cast. ‘Course, as I said, Manhunter was damn near perfect in that regard, so I guess I don’t need to think about it. Whew.