It's a bit of a poisoned chalice making a prequel when the main character is known so intimately by cinema audiences worldwide.

Red Dragon (with a new prologue penned by Thomas Harris) is the novel which brought to our attention the remorseless serial killer and bon viveur Hannibal Lecter.

It's been made before (by Michael Mann, with Brian Cox as Lecter) but now the book's ending has been restored and more of the novel makes it onto the screen.

Anthony Hopkins (who else?) returns as the charmingly evil professor and Norton plays the forerunner of Clarice Starling, FBI investigator Will Graham.

It was Graham who nailed Lecter after the music-loving mass murderer served up slices of an out-of-tune musician to the orchestra's rich patrons.

However, Lecter managed to slide a stiletto into Graham before his capture and now the FBI man must call on his nemesis for help in catching a new killer.

The Tooth Fairy - who murders sleeping families and inserts fragments of mirror into their eyes - has struck twice and is set to strike again with the full moon.

Ratner, who is most famous for the Rush Hour comedy series, is not the man you'd automatically pick to follow in the footsteps of Mann, Jonathan Demme and Ridley Scott.

The latter brought their own particular styles to the series, while Ratner appears satisfied to replicate the atmosphere created by Demme in The Silence Of The Lambs.

Indeed, Lecter's prison cell in Baltimore is exactly the same one where Starling received her celebrated recommendation for chianti and fava beans.

Mann's version was highly stylised and brought a cold, clinical chill to the proceedings, while Ratner's interpretation is functional.

That's not to say Ratner is a bad director - the action flows pretty neatly - but he is guilty of being too reverential with the material.

Tim Evans