Manhunter

UK Release Date. 24 February 1989
Certification. 18
Running Time. 2 hours 1 min
Director. Michael Mann
Cast. Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Denis Farina, Kim Greist, Stephen Lang, Tom Noonan, William Petersen.
Rating. 75%

Review.

Having honed his craft as executive producer on more than 100 episodes of Miami Vice in the 1980s, Michael Mann will forever be associated with stylistic thrillers - Heat, The Insider and Collateral. One of his earliest pieces of work was Manhunter, Mann's adaptation of the Thomas Harris best-selling novel, Red Dragon. 

The novel is the prequel to The Silence Of The Lambs and it is all too easy to make comparisons between Michael Mann's adaptation of Red Dragon and Jonathan Demme's adaptation of the second novel, The Silence Of The Lambs. However, to compare Manhunter and The Silence Of The Lambs quickly becomes a futile exercise. Despite the common literary heritage, these are hugely differing films.

In Manhunter, William Petersen stars as Will Graham, a former FBI profiler, who is coaxed out of retirement by FBI agent Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) to help catch a serial killer known as 'The Tooth Fairy.' It is quickly apparent that Will Graham is broken, still scarred from a previous encounter with the enigmatic serial killer, Dr Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox).

Mann, who adapted the screenplay for the big screen, remains largely faithful to Thomas Harris's original text. Manhunter is a compelling exposition of police procedure and a dark and unsavoury tale of voyeurism with an unsettling gaze into the mind of a monster.

The film is very much of its time. Visually dramatic with the director often opting to film in oppressive lighting, in architecturally impressive suburban homes and in clinical, sterile, alabaster prison cells. Equally distinctive is cinematographer, Dante Spinotti's use of the characteristic green favoured by Dario Argento, particularly in scenes featuring 'The Tooth Fairy.' Combined with staccato editing and an in-your-face, avant-garde rock-synth score this is a film of the 1980s.

Three decades ago Manhunter was dismissed by critics and audiences alike, the film struggled to recoup half of its estimated $15 million production budget at the box office. The criticism seemed to centre on the belief that the film was all style and no substance, but Manhunter, particularly its forensic style of depicting police procedures, perhaps should be appreciated as one of the most influential crime thrillers of the 1980s.