Do yourself a favor.... skip this one and just watch Red Dragon.
Blind bought (no pun intended) the recently-released Blu-ray from Scream Factory and man, was I in for something. I had no prior knowledge that Hannibal Lecktor would make an appearance in this, but then it all unfolds into what would inspire the Hannibal TV series that I really admire.
This is not the best Hannibal Lecter movie but it is probably second. Brian Cox is pretty good but nowhere near Anthony Hopkins. The story is a little slow at times but interesting. The score is really good. There was some noticeably bad editing.
Amazing. I really prefere this film instead of the "silence of the lamb", not because of the actors,infact in both films there are very good actors,but because this one is more realistic and it digs in the psychology of the characters and I love it!
I forgot Michael Mann did a Hannibal Lector film. Though Red Dragon isn't as bad as some say. Anthony Hopkins aside, most the actors were miscast in that.
William Peterson, an under-rated actor of the 80's was better casting as Will Graham than Edward Norton. Despite also having a great cast. Manhunter didn't overcast as bad as Red Dragon.
Just don't expect much of a horror film. Mann mostly is strong at detective or thief movies. Which probably didn't make the best choice to be the first person to bring Hannibal Lector to big screen. Fine director but this might be too slow for some.
Dissapointed. No suspense. The dialogue wasn't clever or interesting. Seen better episodes of Columbo. It felt long. The music is awful. I think it's rated high by people trying to be purist or different.
William Peterson's acting was sometimes bad and his monologues were very bad soap opera.. I'm thinking Sunset Beach.
Not the best movie, but a great watch for a couple reasons: The Michael Mann Miami Vice flavoring throughout. The intro to the Hannibal character. The soundtrack.
None of it puts this movie into masterpiece territory, but all of it combined make this a great watch.
Highly underrated. Always get overshadowed by The Silence of the Lambs, and even the later (and worse) movies when talking about the Hannibal universe. And even when people talk about the best michael mann movies, rarely anyone mentions Manhunter in at least top 5.
But this might be too slow for some people. It's not as engaging and suspenseful as The Silence of the Lambs, but much more on the subtle, realistic, and stylistic side.
It was such a terrible ending for a well made movie
This movie pioneered some of the tropes that were later popularized by (what I consider to be) some of the most overrated movies from the 90s. The dialogue and writing (particularly the crazy serial killer who’s also a mastermind trope) are all presented in a way that’s too cheesy to work with the typical self serious, grounded tone of a Michael Mann film. The plot and characters are also nothing special, it’s a typical serial killer crime film with a predictable sequence of events and no deeper layers. Movies like Seven and Cure at least had their amazing directing to fall back on, this doesn’t. There are some interesting touches here and there (blue light, videotape recordings), but Mann’s sense of pacing isn’t tight. I liked his use of synths in Thief, here it doesn’t always set the right tone if you ask me. I don’t want to sound too negative, because there are good sequences in here, but emotionally it almost never hits the mark for me.
4/10
Terrible WTF ending
The villain was well cast and acted
Moviegoing audiences get their first peek at Hannibal Lecter in this underachieving early adaptation of Thomas Harris's first novel, Red Dragon. Brian Cox is first in line to tackle Lecter, but seems misdirected. He comes off as just some guy in a cell, not the overwhelming, absurdly intimidating presence he is in the book or, later, in the expert hands of Anthony Hopkins or Mads Mikkelsen.
That's not the only bit of directorial blunder. In fact, given the amount of star power involved in the film and the gripping power of the source material, it's a major surprise that it's all so blunt, dull and empty. William Peterson (of later CSI fame) leads the show as Will Graham - bland, erratic and prone to nearly-comical mood swings - with a similarly underwhelming effort from character actor Dennis Farina as his supervisor, Jack Crawford.
And it's not like the director is some hack. Michael Mann is typically very good behind the camera, but in this case he's just completely missed the mark. There's no underlying tension to the proceedings, none of the complicated character arcs that made the original tale so engrossing. Francis Dollarhyde, the fascinating maniac behind the string of murders driving it all, is cut off at the knees thanks to a criminal lack of exploration. His famous full-torso tattoo is left glaringly off-screen, the false teeth that become his trademark converted into a rudimentary, totally unexplained, side prop. As he falls, so does the film.
Despite the two-hour running time, it seems shallow and incomplete, rushed to an unsatisfying new ending that's painfully generic. No surprise it took Hollywood another sixteen years to give it another shot - this is a stain.
Thomas Harris’s signature character, Hannibal Lecter, makes his big-screen debut in Michael Mann’s crime thriller Manhunter. The story follows FBI profiler Will Graham as he’s brought onto a task force to help catch a serial killer that has killed two families and promises to strike again. William Peterson, Brain Cox, Joan Allen, and Dennis Farina form an unusual cast that doesn’t quite fit the material. Peterson seems especially miscast, as he has no charisma and doesn’t deliver the dialog very effectively. Mann’s directing also seems weak, and lacks the intensity needed for this type of procedural. Still, there are some thrills in Manhunter, and the story has its fair share of intrigue.
This really is a great introduction to ‘The Thomas Harris’ adapted to screenplay films. Really fabulous film making Andy storytelling. Michael Mann really is a mesmerizing director.
Shout by cageBlockedParent2021-01-30T05:57:56Z
This movie is a masterpiece of the genre. Do yourself a favor and watch this.