Review: Manhunter
A brief history: Manhunter is a 1986 adaptation of the Thomas Harris novel ‘Red Dragon.’ Prior to it’s release, the people at De Laurentis Entertainment Group (Manhunter’s distributor (talk about indie)) decided against naming the film Red Dragon because of the flop of Michael Cimino’s Year Of The Dragon in 1985. Michael Mann, at the time, was an unknown, only having directed his 1981 debut Thief and the almost non-existent The Keep in 1983. In the end, it did flop anyway, probably because it was released by a company called De Laurentis Entertainment Group. Despite this, Mann went on to become one of the best breathing people on the face of the earth. Also, the sequel novel of ‘Red Dragon’ went into production for 1991 for some reason; The Silence Of The Lambs. That was a little more successful (it won Best Picture). From there, the third book in the Hannibal Lecter series, Hannibal, was filmed by Ridley Scott in 2001. It enjoyed almost no critical or commercial success, even when Scott won Best Picture for Gladiator the year before. Then, ‘Red Dragon’ was adapted again in 2003, under the name Red Dragon, this time by Brett Ratner. I won’t get into that. But, it wasn’t over yet. The fourth Hannibal book, Hannibal Rising, was adapted in 2007 by Peter Webber; it was also a flop. The last two books were clearly written to capitalize on the success of TSOTL, so I’m glad they failed.
So, instead of Anthony Hopkins, we have the great Brian Cox playing the great Hannibal Lecktor (the true book spelling). And he’s great. Not Hopkins great, but great in a Brian Cox way. So, it’s the 80’s and we have William ‘Gil Grissom’ Petersen playing Graham, Lecktor’s capturer and confidante. It progresses much like TSOTL, but instead of trying to unravel Buffalo Bill, we’re after The Tooth Fairy, an insane killer played by Tom Noonan. He played Sammy in Synecdoche, New York. I don’t want to keep comparing this to Lambs, so I won’t. This is a great film, and even though it’s got that extremely cheesy 80’s thriller feel, it’s a Mann film, goddamnit, and it was great. Throw your notions about Lambs out the window and enjoy a great serial killer thriller with an excellent cast and an extremely unique direction.
Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
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