Red Dragon is a 2002 thriller film, based on the novel written by Thomas Harris featuring the brilliant psychiatrist and serial killer Dr. Hannibal Lecter.

Directed by Brett Ratner and written by Ted Tally (who also wrote the screenplay for The Silence of the Lambs), it starred Edward Norton as Graham and Anthony Hopkins as Lecter—a role he had, by then, played twice before in The Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal.

Red Dragon is, in publishing chronology, the first story in the Lecter saga (Hannibal Rising, a later-published origin story, was released on February 9, 2007). Red Dragon's story takes place before the events in The Silence of the Lambs, and after Lecter's original capture and incarceration. While Lecter plays a central role, Red Dragon focuses more on the characters of Will Graham and the tortured serial killer, Francis Dolarhyde.

Plot:

The film begins with a Baltimore Symphony concert marred only by poor flute playing, which visibly distresses one audience member: psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter. In the next scene, Dr. Lecter is hosting a dinner party for the Symphony Board in his elegant townhouse. As he serves a savory dish, he refuses to identify it. A board member expresses her concern that they are feasting on rare delicacies when it is discovered that a Symphony member, Flutist Pierre Raspail, is missing.

After the guests leave, FBI profiler Will Graham rings the doorbell. Lecter invites him in and hands him a Cognac. Graham examines the objects around him. Lecter comes closer and starts talking in a low soothing voice, as if he's talking a patient through a painful diagnostic procedure; in fact, he's eviscerating Graham with a linoleum knife. Eventually, sirens are heard as Graham is rushed to an emergency room and Lecter is rushed to jail.

A few days later, the missing flutist's body is found, missing the thymus and the pancreas. In calves, these two organs are known as ris de veau (literally, calf's laughs); in other food animals, they are called sweetbreads. These organs are a major delicacy of classical French cuisine, implying that Lecter included the organs in the food served at the party.

After his release from the hospital, Graham retires from the Bureau and moves to Florida, where he spends his time repairing boats.

Several years later, Graham is called out of retirement by the FBI to help track down a serial killer known to law enforcement agencies and the press only as "The Tooth Fairy," who has murdered two families, in two cities, in two months. Haunted by the brilliant sociopath that was once his co-agent and friend, Graham must find the courage to ask him for help in finding "the Tooth Fairy." The Tooth Fairy is a disturbed man named Francis Dolarhyde, who worships Hannibal Lecter after learning of his crimes. Dolarhyde also calls himself the "The Great Red Dragon", because of his obsession with the William Blake painting, "The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun". Graham later discovers that Lecter is manipulating him by corresponding with Dolarhyde.

The relationship between Lecter and Graham parallels the relationship between Lecter and Clarice Starling in the later books, but here there are different overtones. Lecter treats Starling as an unworthy student but Graham as a fellow professional (though not an equal). Lecter's acceptance of Graham does not stop at the being "professional" level, but extends further into the overlapping realm between Graham's and Lecter's surprisingly similar psyches.

Two complications hinder the investigation. On the one hand there is Freddy Lounds, a tabloid reporter who once ran afoul of Graham during the Lecter case and is now dogging him to get the story on The Tooth Fairy. On the other hand there is the correspondence between Lecter and Dolarhyde which eventually sees Lecter providing Dolarhyde with Graham's home address, endangering Graham's wife and son. Fortunately, both complications are solved: the first because Dolarhyde kills Lounds after the latter writes unfavourably about him in the newspapers, the second because Graham manages to evacuate his family from their house before any harm can come to them.

In the meantime, Dolarhyde meets Reba McClane, a blind co-worker at Chromalux Film & Videotape Services. Dolarhyde and McClane begin a romantic relationship. Dolarhyde's newfound love conflicts with his homicidal urges, which manifest themselves in his mind as his separate personality "The Great Red Dragon". After his association with Reba, Dolarhyde attempts to stop the Dragon's "possession" of him. In order to stop killing, he believes that he must dominate the dragon by consuming the original copy of the painting. Dolarhyde goes to the Brooklyn Museum, beats a museum secretary unconscious, and eats the original Blake watercolour of The Red Dragon.

Graham eventually realizes that the killer knew the layout of his victims' houses from their home videos, which he only could have seen if he worked for Chromalux, the company that transers the home videos to video cassette. Dolarhyde's job at Chromalux gives him access to all home movies that pass through the company. Sensing that he is about to be caught, Dolarhyde goes to see McClane one last time, but he finds her talking to a co-worker, Ralph Mandy (in this film, a composite of Dandridge and Ralph Mandy in the novel, corresponding to Ralph Dandridge in Manhunter). Enraged, Dolorhyde kills Ralph Mandy, kidnaps McClane and, having taken her to his house, sets the place on fire. He intends to kill her and then himself, but finds himself unable to shoot her. After he apparently shoots himself, McClane escapes.

Graham is given Dolarhyde's scrapbook, saved from the wreckage of the house, which details the killer's obsession with the Blake painting and his admiration of Hannibal Lecter's murder style. The book also exposes the abuse Dolarhyde suffered as a child at the hands of his grandmother, which evidently turned him into a monster.

However, it turns out Dolarhyde did not shoot himself, but used the body of a previous victim (the body is that of Ralph Mandy; in the novel, it is that of a gas station attendant with whom Dolarhyde had had a previous confrontation) in order to stage his own death. Dolarhyde pursues Graham to his home and attacks Graham's son. In order to save his son, Graham subsequently uses the same terms that Dolarhyde's grandmother had used against him (eg. "dirty little beast", threatening to cut off his penis, a threat Dolarhyde's grandmother had used to prevent him from bedwetting as a child), on his own son. This enrages Dolarhyde, who attacks Graham, allowing his son to escape to safety (this episode was added for the movie to prevent a rather graphically violent attack scene from ensuing). Graham's wife, Molly, ends the horrific deal by managing to shoot and kill Dolarhyde. After recovering, Graham receives a slightly triumphant letter from Lecter, which bids him well and hopes that he isn't too disfigured (a statement which has almost no strength in the film version, as opposed to the book in which it is cruelly mocking Graham, as his face is, in fact, irreparably disfigured by Dolarhyde's attack.) The film ends with Dr. Chilton informing Lecter that there is a young woman from the FBI waiting to speak with him; presumably Clarice Starling.