Manhunter
1986
Director: Michael Mann
Starring: William Petersen, Dennis Farina, Brian Cox, Tom Noonan
Let’s talk about the elephant in the room right away - The Silence of the Lambs. Ah, that cinematic bane of Manhunter. In 1986, no one gives a hooey about Hannibal Lecter, but five years later, he’s all the rage. Michael Mann must have been shaking his head in disbelief at how his Lecter film was met with box office ambivalence and Demme’s was both a commercial, critical, and award season success. And now that I’ve seen Manhunter, I’m more than a little incredulous as well. Manhunter is taut, thrilling, creepy, and all around fantastic. It doesn’t deserve to be considered “the forgotten Hannibal film.”
Red Dragon before Red Dragon, the movie tells of Will Graham (Petersen), a retired FBI agent who retired after he caught Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Cox, and yes, I’m sticking with the later spelling of the name). He had to retire because he caught Lecter using psychological profiling, a novel concept in 1986, and Lecter stuck in his head. Graham is enlisted by his friend Detective Crawford (Farina) to help solve the case of the Tooth Fairy killer, a psychopath who murders whole families in their homes. The FBI has bupkus on his motives or where he’ll strike next. Graham realizes that in order to catch the Tooth Fairy, he’ll have to once again think like a psychopath, and even worse, ask for help from the imprisoned Dr. Lecter.
