director/screenwriter
Michael Mann
based on
the novel Red Dragon by
Thomas Harris
producers
Dino De Laurentiis
Richard A. Roth
cinematographer
Dante Spinotti
music
Michel Rubini
Klaus Schulze
editor
Dov Hoenig
cast
William Petersen (Will Graham)
Kim Greist (Molly Graham)
Joan Allen (Reba)
Brian Cox (Dr. Hannibal Lecktor)
Dennis Farina (Jack Crawford)
Stephen Lang (Freddie Lounds)
Tom Noonan (Francis Dolarhyde)
David Seaman (Kevin Graham)
Benjamin Hendrickson (Dr. Chilton)
Dan Butler (Jimmy Price)
Patricia Charbonneau (Mrs. Sherman)
Frankie Faison (Lt. Fisk)
Chris Elliott (Zeller)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 119m
u.s.
release: 8/22/86
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
official website
other michael
mann films
reviewed on this website:
- collateral
- heat
- the
insider
see also:
- red
dragon
- the
silence of the lambs
- hannibal
|
It's
difficult now to watch Manhunter without thinking of its
quasi-sequel, The
Silence of the Lambs, which introduced most people to
Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Most people, indeed, had not seen (and still
have not seen) 1986's Manhunter, the true movie debut
of Lecter; point this out, though, and you may be faced with
a disinterested response along the lines of "Yeah, but some
other guy plays Lecter." Yeah, but that "some other
guy" -- Brian Cox, perhaps better known these days as Dr.
Guggenheim in Rushmore
-- does a fine job in the role; perhaps not what Anthony Hopkins
later did with Lecter in Silence and Hannibal,
but still a creepy and effective turn, dealing in the same taunting
wit and disconcertingly direct psychotherapy. Cox's Lecter (spelled
"Lecktor" in the movie, for whatever reason) doesn't
deserve to be dismissed just because he's not Anthony Hopkins,
and though it's hard to say he was the best Lecter -- he simply
gets neither enough screen time to make a major impression nor
the juicy, combative-flirtatious relationship with Clarice Starling
that Hopkins enjoyed in his films -- he was the first.
With Lecter out of the way, then, how is Manhunter as
a movie? As an adaptation of Thomas Harris' 1981 novel Red
Dragon, it's pretty faithful and even retains a romantic
subplot that many filmmakers might have chosen to discard. The
hero, Will Graham (William Petersen), is a former FBI agent who
retired after being near-fatally wounded by Dr. Lecter while
capturing him. Graham's special gift -- what endears him most
to his superior, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) -- is the ability
to get inside a killer's mind; not literally, as Jennifer Lopez
did in The
Cell, but by looking at the evidence and patterns of
behavior and allowing himself to "become" the killer
in theory. Graham is brought out of retirement when another killer,
christened "The Tooth Fairy" by the tabloids, is on
the loose. Two families have already died at his hands, during
a full moon, and another full moon is approaching.
Manhunter was written and directed by Michael Mann, who
at that point was known chiefly for his television success with
Miami Vice; his previous two features, Thief and
The Keep, were non-starters. Here he delivers an exercise
in style that nonetheless never loses sight of the emotional
equation. The killer, Francis Dolarhyde (Tom Noonan), who prefers
to be called "Red Dragon" after the famous William
Blake painting, is not some diabolical mastermind; he's driven
by demons of rage, fear, and jealousy. Born with a harelip, Dolarhyde
so strongly detests his appearance that he places shards of a
mirror in the eyes of his victims (a touch worthy of Dario Argento)
so that they may witness his "Becoming" -- his transformation,
like Buffalo Bill in Silence, into something greater,
something else. Tom Noonan's reputation as a master of
creepiness is based more or less on Dolarhyde, but his performance
is surprisingly restrained, almost soft, particularly when Dolarhyde
-- who had never expected to find love -- meets his dream woman,
Reba (Joan Allen in a solid early role), a blind coworker. "You're
all about seeing, aren't you?" Graham muses aloud to his
absent prey; it's fitting, then, that Dolarhyde's one chance
at pure happiness is all about not seeing.
Mann's script is taut, and, for once, so is his direction, which
deviates from most of his subsequent films in that it doesn't
shout "Hey, look, I'm a director" from the rooftops.
(It wasn't until 1999's The
Insider that he learned to calm down and trust a story
again.) Granted, the color-intense cinematography by Dante Spinotti
will remind you of Miami Vice as well as the many '80s
cop thrillers whose visual style Mann influenced. Still, you
don't watch this and think of it as an unusually good Miami
Vice episode (unlike, say, Mann's Heat,
which seemed like an unusually long Miami Vice
episode); it has its own heartbeat. The sharp photography and
generous widescreen compositions (both painstakingly preserved
on Anchor Bay's February 2001 DVD edition) help to link the film
with the night terrors of John Carpenter and (again) Dario Argento;
and Mann, in this movie at least, has a precise feel for what
music will punch up a scene's emotions. During a love scene between
Dolarhyde and Reba, we hear Shriekback's dreamy, mesmeric "This
Big Hush," which has the odd effect of rendering the lovemaking
both tender and disturbing; later, during the climax, Mann breaks
out the usually tiresome "In-a-Gadda-da-Vida," here
used in probably the coolest way imaginable -- in that sense,
at least, the movie is like Miami Vice, whose best episodes
dusted off old Peter Gabriel nuggets and made them hip again
(Gabriel probably owes some of his solo success in the '80s to
Michael Mann, who knew how to use "Biko" and the later-overused
"Rhythm of the Heat," and also to Cameron Crowe for
sealing the deal with "In Your Eyes").
William Petersen, too, carries the movie. He had a one-two punch
in the '80s, with this film and To Live and Die in L.A.,
neither of which met with major success; subsequently he retreated
to supporting roles until finally making his way back to his
roots, playing the Graham-like hero of the TV series CSI.
As Graham, he has a tough balance to maintain: he has to convince
us that he was once a tough FBI agent, now scarred by circumstance,
who genuinely dreads getting back in the game. Petersen starts
off almost hypersensitive; we do wonder how he survived in the
FBI all those years. As the movie goes on, though, and Graham
catches more of the killer's scent, his hunter's instinct overrides
his fear and Petersen gradually shows us the expert profiler
Graham used to be, the obsessive crank who wants to watch home
movies of the victims over and over again, long after even Jack
Crawford has called it a day. Petersen, much like Jodie Foster
in Silence, conveys intellectual excitement as the trail
grows hotter, tempered with compassion for the dead -- though
in his case, his empathic methods being what they are, Graham
cannot allow himself to relate to the murdered more than the
murderer. The character of Graham is actually perfect for a TV
series, so it's not surprising that The Profiler, with
Ally Walker as a kind of synthesis of Graham and Clarice Starling,
ran with the concept.
When Manhunter came out, a year before Harris published
Silence of the Lambs and five years before the adaptation
of that book was released, nobody knew that it was going to be
the first in a series or that the weird guy in the cell would
go on to become America's most beloved lunatic. The few who saw
and appreciated it back then probably thought of it as no more
than a better-than-average police procedural; as it was, it got
the short end of the stick that year, since its distributor,
DeLaurentiis Entertainment Group, was busy focusing on the marketing
of the flop Maximum Overdrive and platforming Blue
Velvet into an art-house hit. Each time a new Hannibal Lecter
movie comes out, though, Manhunter gets a new lease on
life; in the wake of Silence's success, it was shown on
NBC as Red Dragon (with the absurd, misleading subtitle
The Curse of Hannibal Lecter), and the Anchor Bay VHS/DVD
reissue of the film coincided with the premiere of Hannibal.
Let's hope this eminently worthy and stylish work doesn't have
to wait for yet another Hannibal Lecter film (or its own upcoming
remake)
to find an audience. |
