Manhunter

1986 Crime Drama

Red Dragon, the Thomas Harris novel that introduced serial killer Hannibal Lecter to the world, was adapted for the screen by Michael Mann as Manhunter. Ace criminal profiler Will Graham (William Petersen) is very good at his job because he has the ability to make himself think like the killers he tracks. Will has been in retirement since catching Hannibal "the Cannibal" Lecter (Brian Cox), as being inside that particular deranged mind caused Will to have a breakdown. Will's boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina visits Will at his home, showing him pictures from a murder scene and asking for his help in catching a new killer they have dubbed "the Tooth Fairy" (Tom Noonan). In order to test his mental strength, Will visits Hannibal in his prison cell. Adding to the already substantial mental stress Will experiences when he returns to the job are nosy tabloid reporter Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang), as well as Hannibal's attempts at seeking revenge through the Tooth Fairy. After two additional films that featured Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter (Silence of the Lambs and Hannibal) became box-office blockbusters, Manhunter was re-made as Red Dragon starring Hopkins and Edward Norton as Will Graham. more..

Director: Michael Mann

Starring: William Petersen, Kim Greist, Joan Allen,Brian Cox, Dennis Farina

Reviews

  • The best Hannibal Lecter movie and one of the greatest suspense movies ever made... A lurid masterpiece that pays homage to the seductiveness of pulp, not by dressing it in the trappings of fine art but by stripping it to the essentials of what we responded to in the material in the first place.

    - Salon.com

    26 April 2013

  • Mann takes all the instincts he learned as a Miami Vice producer and trims them of their excesses, and the result is an unsettling thriller whose detached style perfectly complements its psychological intensity.

    Keith Phipps - The A.V. Club

    26 April 2013

  • William L. Petersen (''To Live and Die in L.A.") gives another mesmerizing, seeming nonperformance as the brilliant agent on the trail of a serial killer who has murdered families in the South.

    Gene Siskel - The Chicago Tribune

    26 April 2013

  • The brilliance of Michael Mann's Manhunter is that it appreciates that the true nexus of humanity is our shared closeness.

    - Entertainment Weekly

    26 April 2013

  • Petersen is superb as the obsessive investigator who risks madness each time he takes on a case, and Tom Noonan is absolutely chilling as the psycho killer.

    - TV Guide

    26 April 2013

Awards

  • Michael Mann

    Cognac Festival du Film Policier (1987)

  • Best Motion Picture

    Edgar Allan Poe Awards (1987)