Michael Mann’s ‘Manhunter,’ a serial killer thriller of a different type, turns 40
Mann’s third feature, like most of his work, has gained in esteem over the years.
(Note: There is a new 4K director’s cut in theaters of Manhunter, titled Manhunter: The Final Cut, with a Blu-ray release to come as well. I was unfortunately not able to go see it during its brief local run, so this essay is based on the original theatrical version.)
Michael Mann’s Manhunter, from 1986, was overshadowed, for a very long time, by The Silence of the Lambs, also based on a Thomas Harris novel, and also featuring the character who our president inexplicably calls “The Late, Great Hannibal Lecter.” (In Manhunter, his surname is spelled “Lecktor.”)
Released five years later, Jonathan Demme’s 1991 film of The Silence of the Lambs was a cultural phenomenon that pulled off an historic Oscars sweep and made a ton of money. I for some reason have a memory of Manhunter being shown on network television, at some point in the 1990s, not under its own name but rather under the title “Red Dragon: The Curse of Hannibal Lecter,” even restoring the spelling from the Demme version- even though the notorious cannibal serial killer has a comparatively small role.
In Manhunter, Dr. Lecter is played by Brian Cox, who some cineastes will tell you gave an even more horrifying performance than Anthony Hopkins did in Silence.
Someone on a movie forum dug up the network intro:
Released in August of 1986, 40 years ago this month, Manhunter won no Oscars and wasn’t nearly as big a hit, but it always had its fans. And even before the widely praised new director’s cut, Manhunter has certainly benefited from the widespread positive re-appraisel that the Letterboxd generation has bestowed upon Mann’s entire body of work.
Manhunter is a serial-killer thriller, which has elements of many films in the genre to come, starting with a hero who’s both competent and determined in what he does, while also struggling not to crack up- a theme that Mann would return to repeatedly in his work.
