Manhunter (1986)

"The best Hannibal Lecter movie and one of the greatest suspense movies ever made...A lurid masterpiece...  Allen Barra, Salon.com
"...an intense experience. All of the actors, including even legendary goofball Chris Elliott, give brooding, serious performances.  Dave Beuschner, Film Threat
"...an unsettling thriller whose detached style perfectly complements its psychological intensity.  Keith Phipps, The Onion A.V. Club
"The brilliance of Michael Mann's Manhunter is that it appreciates that the true nexus of humanity is our shared closeness.  Marc Bernardin, Entertainment Weekly
"Petersen is superb...  TV Guide

Editor's Note Retired FBI agent Will Graham (William L. Petersen) returns to action to hunt down a serial killer by using his ability to get inside the psychopath's mind. However, it was this ability that drove him into retirement in the first place. The process of tracking and capturing the infamous Hannibal Lecter (Brian Cox) took a tremendous psychic toll on Graham, causing him to spent time in a mental hospital. With another madman on the loose, Graham has no choice but to return to duty, though he knows that it might cost him his family and his sanity. To get the old mind-set back, Graham visits Hannibal Lecter in his high-security jail cell. However, the manipulative Lecter plays both sides and warns the new killer that Graham is on his trail, telling him to destroy Graham's family to protect himself. In order to save his own family, Graham must risk everything to once again enter into the mind of the criminally insane. With MANHUNTER, Mann raises the bar for serial killer films, imbuing his killer with an almost sympathetic quality while keeping him extremely menacing and clearly dangerous. Based on the Thomas Harris novel RED DRAGON, which serves as the prequel to THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, MANHUNTER is a masterpiece of gripping storytelling and psychological horror.

	Brian Cox
	Chris Elliott
	Dennis Farina
	Joan Allen
	Kim Greist
	Stephen Lang
	Tom Noonan
	William L. Peterson
	Bernard Williams - Executive Producer
	Dante Spinotti - Cinematographer
	Dino De Laurentiis - Producer
	Dov Hoenig - Editor
	Jack Blackman - Art Director
	Mel Bourne - Production Designer
	Michael Mann - Director
	Michael Mann - Screenplay
	Michel Rubini - Original Music By
	Thomas Harris - Based On Novel By

Based on the Thomas Harris novel RED DRAGON, MANHUNTER has all the ingredients of a great thriller. Will Graham is a former FBI agent who has the uncanny ability to enter the minds of psychopaths. When a maniac begins killing entire families, Will is drawn out of retirement to use his skill once again--but at great personal cost.

"You want the scent? Smell yourself."----Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox) to Will Graham (William L. Petersen)

"You had certain disadvantages."----Will Graham, explaining to Lektor how he was able to capture him. "What disadvantages?"----Hannibal Lecktor "You're insane."----Will Graham

"If one does what God does enough times, one will become as God is."----Hannibal Lecktor, giving Will Graham an archaic clue

Entertainment Weekly
"...[Noonan] burns up the frame...[as] one of the freakiest madmen Hollywood has ever given us....You'll never listen to IN-A-GADDA-DA-VIDA without locking the doors again..." -- Rating: B 06/21/1996 pp.72-3

Variety
"...Brian Cox has some delicious moments as a brilliant, depraved criminal....Stephen Lang is outrageously despicable..." 08/13/1986

Los Angeles Times
"...[Mann] mounts his film with the speed of a bullet train and virtually defies us to get off while it's in motion..." 08/15/1986 p.C1

Total Film
"...Gripping and packed with director Michael Mann's visual stylistics..." 04/01/2001 p.112

Variety 9 of 10
Manhunter is an unpleasantly gripping thriller that rubs one's nose in a sick criminal mentality for two hours...Pic is based upon Thomas Harris' well-received novel Red Dragon and deals with a southern former FBI agent (William Petersen) who is summoned from retirement to work on a particularly perplexing case, that of a mass murderer who appears to stalk and select his victims with particular care...Petersen's excellent deductive talents are due, in large measure, to his tendency to deeply enter the minds of killers, to begin thinking like them...This trick takes the film into interesting Hitchcockian guilt transference territory and Mann's grip on his material is tight and sure. Director is at all times preoccupied by visual chic...Tom Noonan cuts a massive swath as the killer, who late in the game is surprisingly humanized by a blind girl, played in enormously touching fashion by Joan Allen.

Reel.com 9 of 10
When fans of The Silence of the Lambs are made aware that there is another movie featuring Hannibal Lecter also based on a book by Thomas Harris, they often head immediately to their nearest video store. After seeing Manhunter, these folks might be dissatisfied by the spare number of scenes the mad doctor appears in, but they are probably pleasantly surprised by how tightly crafted and elegant Michael Mann's film is...The creator of Hannibal Lecter, writer Thomas Harris, is interested in the fine line between good and evil. The madmen that populate his work can only be caught by investigators who have dark sides of their own...It is precisely this complexity that, in the long run, makes Manhunter quite possibly better than Silence of the Lambs. Mann incorporates a visually stunning -- and sometimes strikingly surreal -- mise-en-scene that blows away Jonathan Demme's more straightforward presentation. Compare the austere white cell of Hannibal here to the dank dungeon where Anthony Hopkins dwelt. The latter might be more frightening for the moment, but it's the former that sticks in the brain. - Rod Armstrong