Before Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Anthony Hopkins) was dining on human liver, fava beans and chianti, he was part of the high class society, serving the rich to the rich.

In the beginning of “Red Dragon,” we find out that there have been a series of murders where the victims’ body parts were cooked and used for food. William Graham (Edward Norton) is an FBI agent who seeks Hannibal’s advice on who is committing the murders. But Graham’s constant imagining and thinking-out-of-the-box logic enables him to discover it was Hannibal himself who was behind the murders. He is captured and sent to jail.

With Hannibal in jail, a murderer dubbed “The Tooth Fair” has surfaced. He has a habit of killing a specific family and inserting mirror shards into the victims eyes when the moon is full. He calls himself “The Red Dragon,” after the William Blake painting “The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in Sun.”

If I told anymore, it would ruin this artistic movie and there would be no reason to see it.

What makes this movie just as good as “Silence of the Lambs” is the suspenseful direction the movie goes, the wonderful acting by Hopkins, Norton and the rest of the cast, and the psychological beginnings as to how the Red Dragon was born.

The plot is never predictable, and there’s always a refreshing twist to the movie, and the climatic ending is wonderfully executed. There are so many memorable scenes in the movie that it’ll be hard to dislike.

One of the more memorable scenes is when the “Tattler” reporter gets caught by The Red Dragon, and his skin is super glued to an old fashion wheel chair. The Red Dragon forces the reporter to look at him while he reveals the “rebirth” of his victims so that the reporter can get the true story, instead of the one falsified by Graham.

You’ll have to watch the movie.

Scenes like this are so abundant and so creative that this film is a true masterpiece. It’s one of the rare movies that you’ll have to experience in order to appreciate. It is just that good.