There is, of course, one over-riding question about this surprisingly well-wrought thriller. Why make it, when Michael Mann had already produced the acclaimed Manhunter from the same Thomas Harris novel?

There are valid reasons -- not least of which is that Mann treated the novel like several hundred pages of suggestions, and a faithful treatment was worth doing.

But another, even bigger, reason is that if fans of Silence Of The Lambs were willing to give Anthony Hopkins a mulligan over the goddawful sequel Hannibal, it behooved him to give his best shot on a third.

Darned if he didn't do it -- and with a serviceable hack in the director's chair, doing what Ridley Scott couldn't. Brett Ratner (The Family Man, Rush Hour 1 and 2) is not one for originality, but he has a keen eye for what's worked before. And Red Dragon pushes many of the same buttons as Silence Of The Lambs, while backing away from some of the more egregious errors of judgment that turned Hannibal into an unintentional comedy.

Indeed, Lambs the novel was a reprise of Red Dragon in many ways. The film finds an FBI agent named Will Graham (Edward Norton) on the trail of a mystifying serial killer known as "The Tooth Fairy," one who murders entire families with the shards of their own mirrors. Stumped, he plumbs the mind of the most diabolical of killers behind bars, Hannibal Lecter (Hopkins, who's worked out enough to acceptably play a decade younger, and performs with the stillness of caged rage).

The difference is that Graham is the agent who actually nailed Lecter, a fact that adds an element of malice to their head games that Clarice Starling didn't get.

All this requires a major beefing up of Lecter's two-scene introductory presence in his first Harris novel. The novel was all about Francis Dolarhyde, the smart, eclectic and achingly-tortured killer, played here almost sympathetically by Ralph Fiennes. Thankfully, original Lambs scripter Ted Tally is good for the balancing act, creating scenes for Lecter that are up to the witty standard audiences have come to expect from film history's most popular villain. On the Dolarhyde side, there's a relationship with a blind co-worker (Emily Watson) that performs the -- these days -- unpopular act of humanizing evil.

This isn't to say that Ratner has all of a sudden attained the touch of an auteur. He moves things along like a train, but has the usual Hollywood hamhandedness with a thriller ending (is he dead? ... I think he's dead ... Whoa, he's not dead! ...).

And there's a thudding quality to at least one character who's along as a mere plot device -- a tabloid reporter (Philip Seymour Hoffman) who is so detestable that you know he's there to be thrown to the lions as the audience cheers.

But with writing like this and top-notch actors in high gear, this is almost a director-proof movie.

There's talk of Hannibal films being squeezed out indefinitely, but this would be the perfect high point at which to bid the character adieu.

(This film is rated AA)

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