You can almost hear the hum of an outboard motor as Thomas Harris defiantly jumps the shark. Red Dragon and The Silence Of The Lambs were admittedly fairly hokey novels (your villain is a cannibal whose first name just happens to be… wait for it…), but they were fantastically twisty and addictive. Here all pretence at narrative sense or believable character just goes right out the window, in a slew of pseudo- intellectual psychobabble and cheap Dante references.
The film is a slight improvement on the novel, managing as it does that rare cinematic balance, trashy and sedate- it’s like a 2 hour Volvo commercial as directed by Herschell Gordon Lewis. And there are few more grotesque and riveting sights in modern film than that of Ray Liotta eating his own brain.
by Tom Huddleston | Source: ITV2
02 Jul 2007 3:19 PM | Submit Comment
