Manhunter
by Michael Mann
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: Brian Cox, Dennis Farina, Joan Allen, Kim Greist, William PetersenDirector: Michael Mann
Cinematographer: Dante Spinotti
Writer: Michael Mann
Editor: Dov Hoenig
Producer: Bernard Williams
Producer: Dino De Laurentiis
Producer: Richard Roth
Writer: Thomas Harris
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, DVD-Video, NTSC, Widescreen
Picture Format: 2.35:1
Running Time: 120 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-09-11
Audience Rating: R (Restricted)
Studio: MGM (Video & DVD)
Movie Reviews of Manhunter
Movie Review: Hopkins is still to come
Summary: 4 Stars
The first episode of Doctor Lecter, before "The Silence of the Lamb" and "Hannibal". The Doctor is already in prison and he is already playing from there with some serial killers and the FBI. But the book is slightly still in construction, and the film is too. We do have the serial killer, and the new technique of profiling. But it is still not entirely squared out. The FBI man is still relying on his instinct, his sixth sense, his intuition, his inner eye to understand the feelings and the thoughts of the killer and capture him by being able to foresee what he is going to do. But that paranormal element is not convincing, though it is commonly used in some detective TV series. Thomas Harris is going to get to real profiling only in the next volume. Even the great visionary power of Doctor Lecter will become the unavoidable logic of the mind, of the psyche, of the deranged mental power of the insane doctor only then. He is a genius in his psychiatric field and his derangement gives him the capability to know no limits. But that is still to come. Here though Thomas Harris settles some accounts with journalists and has one burnt alive. He also settles some revenge with story telling and twists the story line in some unforeseen ways now and then. These moments are magic in a way since they are unexplained and they restart the dynamic of the tale that could have become humdrum. The story seems to settle some accounts with a couple of commonplace if not trite ideas. The whole logic of the killer is to think that his being seen over and over again by a women during the last five minutes of their lives as if their eyes were silver mirrors would lead him to be loved and to come to terms with his desire to kill. His last victim actually loves him in a way and/but she is blind. She loves him because she is blind and he kills her out of no reason and she will not be able to "see" him when she dies. Of course that victim will survive because our FBI man-hunter will come into the picture unannounced. Thomas Harris also deals with the idea that all serial killers were boys who were mistreated when children, probably by their parents, even more probably somewhere by their mothers. That kind of a clich? is so simple that it does not sound true nor serious, some kind of a joke, maybe a big wink with a grin at the nasty and dirty mind of the reader. But this clich? will be present in absolutely all the Doctor Lecter books, in a way or another. In this case it is really superficial. It is interesting to see, after reading it, this first episode in the story of Doctor Lecter, first episode as it came out of the mind of its author because we can see and feel the genetic dimension of the saga, because it was to become a saga and today it even has become a cultish trip into criminal insanity.
Dr Jacques COULARDEAU, University Paris 1 Pantheon Sorbonne, University Versailles Saint Quentin en Yvelines, CEGID
Summary of Manhunter
Witness the birth of evil. This eerie, very intense (New York) thriller from writer-director Michael Mann (Heat, The Insider) first introduced the world to the cunning, unforgettable serial killer named Hannibal. Joan Allen and Stephen Lang co-star in this dark locomotive ofa film (Los Angeles Times) that promises to keep viewers riveted (Time)!Former FBI profiler Will Graham (William Petersen, CSI ) reluctantly returns to his old job to track a horrific serial killer known as the 'tooth Fairy. But in order to get into the mind of this maniac, Graham must face another: Hannibal, the imprisoned psychiatrist whose own insanity almost cost Graham his life and whose insights into the Tooth Fairy could prove as dangerous as the killer himself.Though it will always be remembered as the movie featuring the "other" Hannibal Lecter, Michael Mann's 1986 thriller Manhunter is nearly as good as The Silence of the Lambs, and in some respects it's arguably even better. Based on Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon, which introduced the world to the nefarious killer Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter, the film stars William Petersen (giving a suitably brooding performance) as ex-FBI agent Will Graham, who is coaxed out of semiretirement to track down a serial killer who has thwarted the authorities at every turn.
Graham's approach to the case is a perilous one. First he seeks counsel with Lecter (Brian Cox) in the latter's high-security prison cell--an encounter that is utterly horrifying in its psychological effect--and then he begins to mold his own psyche to that of the killer, with potentially devastating results. As directed by Mann (who was at the acme of his success with TV's Miami Vice), this sophisticated cat-and-mouse game never resorts to the compromise of cheap thrills. Predating Anthony Hopkins's portrayal of Lecter by four years, Cox plays the character closer to Harris's original, lower-key conception, and he's no less compelling in the role. Petersen is equally well cast, and as always Mann employs rock music to astonishing effect, using nearly all of Iron Butterfly's heavy-metal epic "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida" to accompany the film's heart-stopping climactic sequence. All of this makes Manhunter one of the finest films of its kind, as well as further proof that Harris's fiction is a blessing to any filmmaker brave enough to adapt it. --Jeff Shannon
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