Customer Reviews

Manhunter

5 star:		(90)
4 star:		(62)
3 star:		(28)
2 star:		(31)
1 star:		(41)

 

 

manhunter was released in 1986 and is a prequel to the silence of
the lambs.it was remade in 2002,with different actors under the name
red dragonand while both movies are very good,there are some
differences.man hunter is very atmospheric in tone,utilizing music
more.it is very stylistic,yet also has substance.the action and drama
scenes are well done and lit very effectively.the film is much darker
in its mood or tone than red dragon,and very effective in building
suspense.the acting is well done,particularly william peterson in one
of his earliest performances.i really enjoyed the movie and cared about
the characters and became emotionally involved.well done movie.will
more than satisfy fans of the genre. 4/5

Like many people who have seen "Silence of the Lambs," I didn't know of "Manhunter," the first in the series, and by far one of the best one. This film was not only far ahead of its time but also a fantastic bit film making (Michael Mann once again hits the spot) in every sense of the word. The plot is the now basic serial killer on the loose/ cop must stop him and save his next victim. However, there are some very original and brilliant inventions in this film that separates it from the rest.

William Petersen is the cop, Will Graham and brilliant he is at playing him. He plays his psychological torment smoothly but making it unnerving for us. Tom Nooman is quite brilliant and in that way I mean terrifying at `The Tooth Fairy', the killer of the story. (Be sure to note the "wings" of blood under his arms after he has been shot and killed. This is, apparently, as close as he will get to becoming the "Red Dragon" he believed he was metamorphasizing into.)
He's multi-layered and he makes you both hate and feel sorry for him. Brian Cox is Lector in this tale. I won't bother with comparisons between him and Hopkins, because they both play Lector differently. Full credit must go to Cox though, he doesn't need masks or camp one-liners to try and make him scary. He is scary, his eyes, the deceiving way he talks. This is acting, not prop work but Anthony is still Lector to me.

Sure, "Manhunter" has weaknesses. Graham's acting is sporadic. The scenes where he is getting riled up at the as-yet-unknown killer are a bit weak. ("You son of a b****! You wanted them to watch, didn't you?") Also, as much as I enjoy Mann, it's probably too stylized for its own good. This is properly Mann's first masterpiece. The opening scene pans down from a blue sky to Graham and Crawford sitting on a branch on the sand. Freeze frame that. It is a perfect composition. A Vettriano image. This respect for composition is echoed through the movie. There are so many opportunities here to see the visual, the lighting, the camera all coming together. Yes, it is a 1980's pic. It was made in the 1980's and is a tribute to the look and feel of the time. He directs the film with so much skill and style. If I could get anyone to film night's scenes, it would be Mann. His night scenes (The Insider, Last of the Mohicans, Heat) are fantastic to look at and this is no exception and we get a lot of it as the film is mostly filmed at night. The screenplay is a cracker (again by Mann) and the music is class as well. For those who haven't seen this film should and for those who had see this again please.

This is where it all started, years before Silence of the Lambs. Director Michael Mann gives this film a slick 80's look, it's tense, well acted and has a very different Hannibal Lector. This is a really good transfer too, it's not super sharp but it never was in the cinema. Good sound too. Wish it had the trailer that I remember so well.

Don't miss this original, the first of the Hannibal Lechtor series. The score, the filmography, (Lighting), is still so vividly used in the best of today's suspence/thrill sequences.
Will Graham, (William Peterson), is the "Manhunter" hunting down "Frances Dolarhyde", and also the man responsible for imprisoning Dr Lechtor, at great phsycial, and emotional harm to himself.
Don't be fooled by Dino's latest grab at a buck, the rediculous "Red Dragon". (Which is odd, since Dino owns "Manhunter" as well..)
So, Red Dragon is only a remake of this great film.
It's ultimately embaressing to watch Lechtor and Chilton's charachter's re-acted, only "made up" to look 20 some years younger! (Red Dragon).
This is the Real McCoy, and Brian Cox, IMHO, should have stayed Hannibal Lechtor.
If you want another good performance by Anthony Hopkins, see "Meet Joe Black".
BTW, as far as I can tell, Barney's character, (Frankie Faison), is the only actor to play in all "Four movies of the Trilogy"..
If you want the original psychological thriller in this series, you found it..

Pete

MANHUNTER is the 1986 crime-thriller that began Michael Mann's career as a respected filmmaker. Adapted from the novel "Red Dragon" by Thomas Harris, this film will be remembered as "the film with the OTHER Hannibal Lecter" and will dismissed by many as a good first try, but nothing special. CSI's William Petersen stars as Will Graham, a gifted FBI agent who is working to track down a mysterious killer nicknamed the "Tooth Fairy" before the next full moon. Aiding him in his hunt is the (curiously mispelled) criminal genius Hannibal Lecktor, played by Brian Cox. Being a huge fan of the Hannibal Lecter film series and Harris' novels, I have more to work with than some other people. MANHUNTER was adapted and directed by Michael Mann, who also produced "Miami Vice" - and it shows on the glittering design and stunning soundtrack. The acting is okay, but is great only in the cases of Petersen and Dennis Farina (who also featured on "Miami Vice", as well as certain other people who appear in the film). Mann's direction is the greatest part of the film. Brian Cox's performance as "Lecktor" works fine, but is completely incomparable to that of Anthony Hopkins, who played him in the later films. MANHUNTER has been unfairly dismissed as a piece of crap. It's no masterpiece, I'll grant you that, but the fact that the film is so dated, and the work that people like Mann and Petersen have done, make it a wonderful, "Miami Vice"-esque thriller.

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?!

After hearing all the rave reviews for the prequel that was better then silence, and reading the book that is one of my all time favorites. I bought this movie. It's true to the book but for some reason it just didnt hold my attention the way a great movie does. The "stellar" performance by tom noonan as francis dolarhyde is ridiculous, yes he did a decent job but they did absolutely nothing with the character. He only had 3 mins of screen time for crying out loud I suggest you rent this movie before you buy it, if you don't like it then you're not stuck with it and if you do then more power to you. It's definitely worth watching just to see if it suits your tastes

Geez, ths is a great movie (way better than that horrid 're-imagining') but If you want the film I suggest you go pick it up at the store because Amazon's service is terrible. I ordered it over a week ago, and it said it would come in 4-5 business days, but 6 days later, I got another E-Mail saying it would come in 5-6 business days. I haven't ordered anything off of Amazon after it took three months to recieve the Brady Bunch Movie, but I had credit and needed to spend it, but still, I'd appreciate it if the movie came when it was supposed to.

This is a great Michael Mann Film. It carries the same cinematography as Thief(1981). This one he uses his Miami Vice style sets and backdrops to create an interesting scary environment. William Peterson is a detective who consults back and forth with Hannibal Lecter(who is played brilliantly by Brian Cox) to help find another serial killer in the Florida area. He does help him and with the CrimeStory legend Dennis Farina who is assisting him as a cop on the trail of the same killer. The vicious killer is played by Tom Noonan who is great in this role and fits the character in Thomas Harris' book as well. They show different sides to him before Peterson comes close to catching him. A wonderful suspense thriller with interesting Rock Scores.
Directed by Michael Mann
William Peterson, Tom Noonan, Brian Cox, Joan Allen and Dennis Farina

I know Manhunter is somewhat dated and has a very 80s feel to it, but this was a very well-done, creepy film with decent acting and decent directing. Unfortunately, the powers that be (which I suppose in this case is director Michael Mann) have made it so that out of the 4 or 5 different VHS and DVD releases of this film, not one has ever been of the actual theatrical film. Even though these new DVD releases have some new footage put in, there are several short scenes from the original cut that have always been chopped out of these home releases, for some unknown reason. This particular release includes some new clips that add nothing to the plot of the movie and actually make you like some of the lead characters less; they were better off left on the cutting room floor, as they were originally. What makes these new scenes most distracting is that their quality is terrible, so you'll be watching a crisp, high-quality scene and all of a sudden a little grainy, awful-looking clip will appear, having been spliced back in, and then the picture quality suddenly goes to perfect again. Very distracting. I've never seen a director's cut of a film done this way, and I hope I never do again. Most directors would cringe at the thought of saying, "Yes, this is my perfect vision of how this film should have looked, even with these horrible-looking clips included." To get the best experience of this movie, stick with the 2001 release. This one is only interesting for one viewing, and only then just for hard-core fans of the film whose curiosity is piqued.