Amazon.com Essentials:
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
