DVD Manhunter (Full Screen Edition)
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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Review(s): DVD Manhunter (Full Screen Edition) | |
| Good adaptation of the book |
The book "Red Dragon" is a wonderfully written, powerful and suspensful novel. Harris does a fantastic job of creating these characters and making them come to life. In Michael Mann's film version "Manhunter", some of the great ideas in the book are left out, such as the finale when the Tooth Fairy fakes his own suicide and blows up his house to fool the FBI, and then shows up on Grahams doorstep in florida. The ending in the book was far superior to the film, however Michael Mann did a great job in directing this movie and using the actors to bring life to Harris' characters. The investigative procedures where created brilliantly. The Tooth Fairy was well-acted and so was Graham. I prefer the portrayals of Jack Crawford and Dr. Chilton in "Silence of the Lambs, however. The actor who plays Lecter (Lektor), does a fine job in portraying a younger version of the character that Hopkins would later play in "Silence." His dialogue with Graham is similar to that of the book, and there's more to this scene in the Director's cut edition DVD. Although there is a better ending in the book, the one here is fine. Set to music as the FBI tracks Dolarhyde to his home for the final showdown while he holds his lover hostage. The low budget of the film most likely did not permit the explosive ending of the book. For the DVD, I wish Anchor Bay or Mann would have removed that awful song from the end credits however. That seems to me to be the only real flaw in the film.
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| THE ORIGINAL RED DRAGON, AND A MASTERPIECE |  |
My first Michael Mann movie was "Heat", a stunning drama in itself. When I saw "The Insider," I was hooked on to his style. This movie predates the other two, so this is where his style must have developed. Lots of wide-angled shots, a fluid narrative and some astonishingly riveting music (the soundtrack is hard to find btw, it is a collector's item now and boy does it deserve to be!)Manhunter was the first movie adaptation of Tom Harris' book called "The Red Dragon". Although this is a Hannibal Lecktor movie (yes, with a "K") the role of Hannibal is not that prominent here, although what little there is does leave a malevolent tinge. Apparently, Brian Cox (as Lecktor here) caused a lot of furore in 1986 but after having seen Anthony Hopkins thrice in the quietly sinister role I must say he is unmatched. The voice of Hopkins has much more current than Cox's. IMHO. With the exception of Hopkins though, whom I prefer, almost everyone in this film is more compelling than the newer movies (Silence of the lambs, Hannibal, Red Dragon.) I found William Petersen as FBI manhunter Will Graham much more appealing than Jodie Foster's or Julian Moore's Clarice Starling. Petersen's portrayal of Graham as the haunted, introspective, reluctant hero is more complex and believable...you get the sense that he is driven by inner demons to solve the crime he is faced with, but doesn't really want to be there and would much rather spend the remainder of his days in the bosom of his family on the beaches of Captiva Island. The centerpiece of the film though is the terrifying portrayal of psychotic killer Francis Dollarhyde by the underrated but talented actor Tom Noonan. Noonan's hulking build seems a stark contrast to his character's quiet, introverted, soft-spoken persona, which hides the inner embodiment of pure, psychotic evil. Here is a guy who runs a photo lab by day but returns every night to a spooky, surreal lair which obviously reflects his inner psychosis, which he has learned to hide from view. The symbolism of his relationship with the blind Reba (Joan Allen) is obvious. His character is able to present a normal appearance to everyone around him yet goes out on the night of a full moon and slaughters whole families whose pictures he has processed, simply to fulfill his fantasies. Give this film a go if you can manage the tension and the buildup to the shattering climax. Then give the family a hug afterwards, and make sure your doors and windows are locked at night. Mann's filmmaking has a way to make your skin crawl.
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| Read the novel AND see this film! |
I first rented this movie in the late '80s, and I really only did so to see Chris Elliot's cameo -- give me a break, I was really bored that weekend! Years later, when I saw Silence of the Lambs in the theater, I recognized the name of the doctor and realized that these two works were somehow related, and eventually ended up reading all four of Thomas Harris' novels and seeing all five film adaptations, of which Manhunter is my personal favorite.Upon reflection, I initially found the film's ending a bit stereotypically Hollywood, and not quite up to the same high level of quality found in the rest of the film. As I later read the novel, I at first found myself liking the book's ending better, but understood how it might have been much harder to film -- that is, until I got past the red herring to the novel's REAL ending, which made Manhunter's ending seem positively inspired by comparison. (Okay, so maybe I'm being a bit too hard on Harris, and giving Michael Mann a bit too much of a pass on this point....) If you don't like Michael Mann's directorial style, or if you're one of those pseudo-intellectuals who can't look at a film made in another decade without calling it "dated" -- or if you think Anthony Hopkins is the only actor who should ever be legally allowed to play the character of Hannibal Lector --then you might not like this film. Though it often strays from the novel a little bit, and leaves almost all of the exposition regarding the Tooth Fairy's origins out, it all still works. Noonan gives an excellent and economic performance, as does Nancy Allen (and their love scene is one of the more tasteful and romantic in recent memory). Brian Cox also has a different take on the Lector character than Hopkins, but it is ultimately A) closer to the novel's depiction and B) more realistic and believable. Sorry, Tony, but you have to admit, as great as your performance was in Silence of the Lambs, Hannibal comes off much better when the actor playing him resists the urge to chew scenery -- no pun intended.... But it is William Petersen's portrayal of Investigator Graham that really carries the film, and rightly so. As I said before, the novel gives us much, much more background on the Tooth Fairy than the movie does, but the main focus of the story is on Graham and his own internal struggles. I was especially impressed with one scene in particular that Petersen and Mann really pulled off well, as far as taking a great moment from the novel and translating it into a great movie moment. It's the scene in the middle of the film when Graham is seated at a diner, staring out into the rainy night, playing the answering machine message of one of the victims in his head: "Hi, this is Valerie Leads; I'm sorry I can't come to the phone right now..." because she's been murdered, of course. Absentmindedly, Graham says aloud, "Me too." The waitress passing by asks if he was asking for more coffee, and he tells her no. Turning back to the window, having now made up his mind to throw himself completely into the investigation and see it through to the end, Graham says out loud, as if the Tooth Fairy could hear him, "It's just you and me now, sport." This was a great emotional moment in the novel, and Mann and Petersen (and the music score) also manage to make it a great emotional moment in the movie as well, losing nothing in the translation. I give the same number of stars to Jonathan Demme's Silence of the Lambs, but let's face it -- Mann's asylum for the criminally insane is much more realistic and believable than Demme's, for instance. Two different directorial styles, two different approaches to Lector, etc., but each quite good in its own right. The "re-imagining" of 2002 on the other hand is another story, and a sad one at that.... If you're in the mood for the original modern police procedural on investigating serial killers, or for a good psycholgical character study about the effects of such work on the investigators themselves, then give this film a try! PS: Why is it that when most people review books and films on Amazon, A) they seem not to notice that most of what they say has already been said in the hundreds of other reviews previously posted, and B) they seem to feel obligated to recount the entire plot, point by point, spoiler by spoiler, in excruciating detail, instead of just giving the rest of us a simple idea of why we might like or dislike the book or film in question?!
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