A SCARY LOOK AT LECTER B.C. - BEFORE CLARICE.

Byline: Bob Strauss Film Critic

MUST BE A LAW of nature: Making a bad movie with Dr. Lecter in it is just not possible.

Even Ridley Scott - whose adaptation of ``Hannibal'' last year was, by general agreement, narratively tone deaf - turned in a film that boasted such marvelous baroque imagery and well-staged camp cruelty that it was a load of fun despite the director's, and book author Thomas Harris', best incoherent instincts.

Now, going back to Harris' first serial killer novel, ``Red Dragon,'' director Brett Ratner, who made his commercial bones with the noisy ``Rush Hour'' movies, proves that even a filmmaker who is not the kind of self-conscious artist Scott, ``Silence of the Lambs' '' Jonathan Demme and ``Manhunter's'' Michael Mann are can make a perfectly effective Lecter thriller.

Workmanlike, maybe, but still a film with all the elements that made the other three great, scary times at the movies.

There were several reasons to shoot another film version of ``Dragon,'' which was the source material for the 1986 ``Manhunter.'' That was Hannibal Lecter's first screen appearance, but, as in the book, it was limited to a handful of scenes. And the brilliant cannibal was played by Brian Cox, and played well. But five years later, Anthony Hopkins made the character his with his Oscar-winning ``Silence'' performance.

So dropping Hopkins into the ``Dragon'' cell made sense, even though the actor, 63, looks all of his 11 years older in this prequel than he did in ``Silence'' (to Hopkins' credit, we notice, but it doesn't impair our enjoyment of his snaky performance).

Another reason was that Mann, still in high ``Miami Vice'' flash gear at the time, left a lot of the book out of his movie. ``Dragon's'' screenplay, adapted by another ``Silence'' academy laureate, Ted Tally, includes a lot more of the novel, and even adds a prologue depicting Lecter's capture.

That was the work of intrepid FBI profiler Will Graham (Edward Norton, looking spookily like ``Manhunter'' star William Petersen), whom Lecter almost killed. Now retired to the Florida Keys with his wife and young son, Graham is sucked back into tracking mad murderers when The Tooth Fairy/Red Dragon/Francis Dolarhyde sets about slaughtering whole families in their homes.

Naturally, Graham has to tap Lecter's psychiatric genius to find the new killer. But unlike his tauntingly tender relationship with future agent Clarice Starling, Lecter wants Graham dead in the worst way. This is supposed to add a whole extra dimension of risk to their intellectual teaming, but only Hopkins appears to have gotten that.

In an odd choice of performance temperature, the sometimes formidable Norton goes with a variation on the wimpish exasperation he employs for most of his comic roles. The result is a Will Graham who seems both too detached to fear Lecter as much as he should but, also, too passive to overcome his misgivings and heroically get the nasty job done.

But he does, because the story says he should. As for the lonely guy maniac everybody's after, well, the story says a lot about Dolarhyde, much of which doesn't connect, even if the guy is schizophrenic. Sometimes he comes off as the troubled victim of multiple identities, at others like the most calculating villain on the planet. He's played by Ralph Fiennes who, as usual, acts like he's on the edge of an embolism (and in calmer moments, lets the swirling monster tattooed all over his back do the job for him). This helps at times and hurts at others; upshot is, we often can't figure out when we're supposed to pity, fear, hate or laugh at Dolarhyde.

Outside of the three stars, top acting honors go to Emily Watson as the blind co-worker who guides us to whatever still exists of Dolarhyde's soul, and Philip Seymour Hoffman as the scuzzy tabloid reporter whom everyone, good guy or bad, can agree to hate. Close runner-up to that is officious, craven Dr. Chilton, Lecter's jailer, who is played by his ``Silence'' interpreter Anthony Heald (as is Frankie Faison's Barney the orderly).

Also returning, and most welcome, are ``Silence'' production designer Kristi Zea (her Lecter dungeon is reproduced marvelously) and ``Manhunter'' cinematographer Dante Spinotti. As if taking his style notes from this pair, Ratner's presentation registers somewhere between Demme's gothic, pregnant atmospherics and Mann's propulsive sleekness. It's engaging enough as the movie unfolds, but unsuited to deeper resonances or recurring nightmares.

The best reason to see ``Red Dragon'' is to once again watch a virtuoso pluck notes he knows by heart, and share his joy at finding smart, chilling new shadings in those familiar moves. At this point, Anthony Hopkins is the Itzhak Perlman of flesh-eating madmen. Thank the dark gods that somebody is.

RED DRAGON - Three stars

(R: violence, nudity, sex, language)

Starring: Edward Norton, Anthony Hopkins, Ralph Fiennes, Emily Watson, Harvey Keitel, Mary-Louise Parker, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

Director: Brett Ratner.

Running time: 2 hr. 4 min.

Playing: Wide release.

In a nutshell: Effective but workmanlike retelling of the first Hannibal Lecter thriller. Hopkins is fun, Norton's kind of weak, and Fiennes is trembly as usual.