Red Dragonis a 2002 thriller film based on Thomas Harris ' novel of the same name and featuring psychiatrist and serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter . It is a prequel toThe Silence of the Lambs.

The film was directed by Brett Ratner and written for the screen by Ted Tally , who also wrote the screenplay for the Oscar-winningThe Silence of the Lambs. It stars Edward Norton as FBI agent Will Graham and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter, a role he had, by then, played twice before inThe Silence of the LambsandHannibal.

Ralph Fiennes , Phillip Seymour Hoffman , Mary-Louise Parker , Emily Watson and Harvey Keitel are also featured.

Baltimore, Maryland , 1980: in his townhouse, psychiatrist Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins) hosts a dinner party, where his guests might well be dining on portions of a man they knew. Lecter is later visited by Will Graham (Norton), a gifted FBI agent, with whom he has been working on a psychological profile of a serial killer who has removed edible body parts (e.g. kidneys and liver ) from his victims, leading Graham to believe that the killer could be a cannibal . During the consultation and brainstorming session, Graham discovers evidence implicating Lecter in the murders. Lecter attacks him, almost disemboweling Graham before his would-be victim overpowers him. Lecter is sentenced to life imprisonment in an institution for the criminally insane while Graham, severely traumatized by the experience, retires from the FBI.

Years later, another serial killer appears. Nicknamed the "Tooth Fairy," he stalks and kills seemingly random Southern families during sequential full moons . Hoping to capture the killer before his next attack, Special Agent Jack Crawford (Keitel) goes to Graham's home in Florida to seek his assistance. The death of another family weighing on his conscience, Graham reluctantly agrees. After visiting the crime scenes and speaking with Crawford, he concludes that he must once again consult Dr. Lecter for help.

The "Tooth Fairy" is actually a schizophrenic named Francis Dolarhyde (Fiennes) who kills at the behest of an alternate personality he calls "The Great Red Dragon." He is obsessed with a William Blake painting,The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun, and believes that each victim he "changes" brings him closer to "becoming" the Dragon. His pathology is born from the severe abuse he suffered as a child at the hands of his sadistic grandmother (voiced by Ellen Burstyn ).

Freddy Lounds (Hoffman), a tabloid reporter who hounded Graham after Lecter's capture, now follows him for leads on the Tooth Fairy story. There is a secret correspondence between Lecter and Dolarhyde. Graham's wife (Parker) and son ( Tyler Patrick Jones ) are endangered when Lecter gives the Tooth Fairy the agent's home address, forcing them to be relocated to a Kansas farm owned by Crawford's brother. Lecter is aware that the feds are onto him. He raises the stakes: in return for his help in capturing the Tooth Fairy, he requests a first-class meal in his cell and having his book privileges returned.

Hoping to lure the Tooth Fairy out of hiding, Graham gives an interview to Lounds in which he disparages the killer as an impotent homosexual . This provokes Dolarhyde, who kidnaps Lounds, glues him to an antique wheelchair, then forces him to recant his allegations before biting out his tongue and setting him on fire, depositing him outside his newspaper's offices.

At his job in a St. Louis photo lab, Dolarhyde falls in love with Reba McClane (Watson), a blind co-worker, but his Dragon personality demands that he kill her. He takes her home, where they make love. Dolarhyde attempts to stop the Dragon's "possession" of him by going to the Brooklyn Museum and consuming the original Blake watercolor painting of "The Red Dragon".

Graham, meanwhile deduces that the killer knew the layout of his victims' houses from their home videos, which he could only have seen if he worked for the editing company that transfers home movies to video cassette .

Dolarhyde goes to see Reba and finds her with a co-worker, Ralph Mandy ( Frank Whaley ), whom she actually dislikes. Jealous and enraged, Dolarhyde shoots and kills Mandy, kidnaps Reba and, having taken her to his house, sets it on fire. He finds himself unable to shoot her, so Dolarhyde (seemingly) turns his shotgun on himself and fires. Reba, hearing the clock chime and remembering how many steps are from there to the front door, is able to escape as the police show up and the house explodes.

However, it turns out Dolarhyde staged his own death by leaving behind Mandy's charred corpse. He turns up at Graham's home in Florida, where he holds Graham's son hostage, threatening to kill him with a piece of broken glass. To defuse the situation, Graham slings insults at his son that are reminiscent of the ones Dolarhyde's grandmother had used against him. Feeling a sudden sympathy for the boy, the enraged Dolarhyde attacks Graham as the boy flees to safety. Both men are severely wounded in a shootout which ends when Graham's wife Molly fatally shoots Dolarhyde.

After recovering, Graham receives a letter from the incarcerated Lecter, which bids him well and hopes that he isn't "too ugly." Dr. Frederick Chilton ( Anthony Heald ) then informs Lecter that there is a young woman from the FBI waiting to speak with him. Lecter looks up, then asks, "What is her name?"