They just don't get it.

Red Dragon, the adequately suspenseful but ultimately dull prequel to The Silence of the Lambs, suffers from the same thing last year's sequel Hannibal did. Director Brett Ratner, like Hannibal director Ridley Scott, has failed to grasp where the saga's true greatness lies. It wasn't in the standard cop movie gumshoe work or even the taut, nail-biting thrills. It was in the lambs.

Whether or not FBI Agent Clarice Starling could "silence" the screaming lambs in her nightmares fueled the contemporary suspense classic and made her the most interesting character in the trilogy -- more interesting than Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) and certainly more interesting than anyone in Red Dragon.

Ratner fell short exactly where Scott did, in focusing on the villains without developing even slightly interesting protagonists with which to sympathize. Edward Norton looks particularly bored in Dragon as hotshot FBI agent Will Graham, who is coerced out of retirement to put away the "Tooth Fairy" serial killer.

For an actor who has pumped such unbridled passion into his past roles, Harvey Keitel, too, is utterly wasted. It's a shame to see Mr. Keitel reduced to playing an ineffectual FBI higher-up who tries to persuade Will to help track down the killer by whining that everyone else in the FBI is too much of a buffoon to do so themselves.

Ralph Fiennes, by contrast, hits the perfect, creepy note as the troubled "Tooth Fairy" killer. His shy, menacing stares will linger with viewers long after leaving the theater. It doesn't say much for the other characters in the film, however, that the audience becomes far more interested in the serial killer than his victims and pursuers.

-Reviewed by Nicholas Norcia