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Released by: Shout! Factory
Released on: May 24th, 2016.
Director: Michael Mann
Cast: William Peterson, Brian Cox, Tom Noonan, Joan Allen, Dennis Farina
Year: 1986
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The Movie:
Manhunter, written and directed by Michael Mann and based on the novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, my not have been showered in critical accolades nor reaped the box office success of The Silence Of The Lambs. It is, however, historically significant as the first on screen appearance of Hannibal Lector and a damn good movie in its own right.
The movie introduces us to Will Graham (William Peterson), a one-time FBI profiler brought back onto the force by his former boss, Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina). Why? Because there's a serial killer about, referred to as the Tooth Fairy, and he's targeting families. Will has a gift for putting himself in the killer's shoes and figuring things out the way other agents cannot, and Crawford needs his help. So Will leaves his wife Molly (Kim Greist) and son and heads out to help out as best he can.
He starts by investigating the scene of the most recent slaughter and quickly picks up on details missed by the local police while a tabloid journalist named Freddy Lounds (Stephen Lang) pokes around to dig up what he can. To get some insight into the mind of the killer, Will visits an imprisoned serial killer named Dr. Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox), whom he helped put behind bars. He agrees to help him, but has an agenda of his own. While Will and Jack do what they can to track the killer down, a man named Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), who seems to have an unhealthy obsession with William Blake's The Great Red Dragon paintings, becomes closer to his blind co-worker Reba McClane (Joan Allen).
A wonderfully tense mix of style and substance, Manhunter may be bathed in the garish colors of the era that spawned it, but it holds up remarkably well even if it is a product of its time. The synth heavy score, highlighted by some music from Shriekback, may sound dated to younger years but in the context of the movie it works really well. Originally intended to be called Red Dragon like the book that it's based on, producer Dino De Laurentiss insisted it be changed to Manhunter after Michael Ciminos' Year Of The Dragon, also produced by De Laurentiss, proved a commercial flop. It seems to have worked to an extent. While Manhunter didn't blow box office records out of the water, it made some money.
More importantly, in the long run, it developed and grew a serious cult following. There are a few reasons for this, the first being the film's unique look. Each shot in the film is carefully composed, and the use of color can sometimes be completely over the top - but at the same time the picture has a distinctly cold feel to it that works quite well. The sterility results in some of the film's more unsettling moments working better than they might otherwise, with some of the more despicable events in the film portrayed with clinical precision. You could argue that the way that these scenes are presented is a reflection of the killer's methodology.
Mann's often been accused of being a director more interested in the look of his films than how they actually play out or what kind of performances he's able to get out of his cast. Here, he gets the look he was clearly going for, but so too does he get great performances. Peterson is great as Graham. He's clearly trying not to let himself get personally involved in the cast but his empathetic nature means that, to a certain extent at least, he has to. There's a great scene shot on a plane where Graham is examining some photos of a crime scene. He falls asleep and is woken up by the sound of the little girl sitting next to him screaming when she sees what he's been doing. The look on his face, the sheer exhaustion, says more than any scripted dialogue could. He's seems perpetually at odds with himself. He doesn't want to do this but as his wife says to him in a very telling scene, it is the right thing to do. Dennis Farina is very good as Jack Crawford and Kim Greist and Joan Allen offer strong supporting work in their respective roles.
But of course, there are the bad guys to discuss. Brian Cox, as Lecktor, doesn't get the screen time afforded to Anthony Hopkins when he played the part, but when Cox is on screen, he shines. His Lecktor is diabolical, brilliant and fascinating to watch and Cox plays him with both the arrogance and the sophistication that the character requires. Likewise, Tom Noonan as Dollarhyde is fantastic. He uses his formidable size to cast a chilling shadow and the scenes where he interacts with Allen's blind character are eerie because we are able to see here what she is not and are therefore far more aware of her impending plight than she is. He plays crazy well, without going so far over the top as to venture into parody or scenery chewing. Mann would use Noonan again a few years later in 1995's Heat.
Worth noting is that fact that this Blu-ray release contains both the original theatrical cut of the movie as well as the longer director's cut of the film. The additions to the director's cut include slightly different opening credits, extensions in the police room briefing scene, longer takes on conversations that Graham has with a few characters (his wife, Lecktor, and two different conversations with Crawford), a scene with Will and his wife in a hotel room, a short clip of Will trying to watch a movie and probably most importantly an interesting scene towards the end where Will pays an unannounced visit to the family he had pegged as Dollarhyde's most recent target. When it's all said and done this material adds about three minutes to the running time of the theatrical cut.
Video/Audio/Extras:
Both the theatrical and director's cut versions of the movie are presented on their own individual BD50 discs in AVC encoded 1080p high definition framed at 2.35.1. The theatrical cut looks pretty good, showing decent detail and very good color reproduction. The director's cut is a different story, because it was clearly put together using a variety of sources. So while the material that the director's cut shares with the theatrical cut is of the same quality, the inserted and extended shots and scenes vary in quality quite a bit (see the second screen cap below for an example). However, if this is all that there is to work with, it's to Shout's credit that the director's cut has been preserved here and even in this less than perfect presentation the director's cut looks better than it did on the old Anchor Bay DVD releases. As to the non-inserted material and the theatrical cut, sometimes things look a little soft but this has always been the case with Manhunter, it's got a soft look to certain scenes so that's to be expected. Skin tones typically look good, black levels are strong and texture is pretty solid. Color reproduction is frequently very impressive, really making Mann's use of those ever-so-eighties colors pop at times.
Regardless of which cut you choose, you get DTS-HD 5.1 and 2.0 Stereo mixes, in English, with optional subtitles provided in English only. Those who appreciate remixes will find the 5.1 track does a nice job of spreading things out, the soundtrack in particular, while purists will opt for the original stereo mix. Both are properly balanced while dialogue stays clean, clear and easily discernable throughout. The now somewhat famous use of Iron Butterfly's In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida sounds great here!
Extras are spread across the two discs in the set as follows:
Disc One (Theatrical Cut):
First up is a series of featurettes that detail the making of the film. The first of these is an eighteen minute interview titled The Mind of Madness in which leading man William Petersen talks about his experiences bringing Will Graham to life. He shares some input on his character, talks about his experiences on set and gives some insight into what went into making it all work. Courting A Killer gets Joan Allen in front of the camera for sixteen minutes to offer her side of the story. Here she talks about playing a blind character, the cast and crew that she worked with, her thoughts on the film and other topics. In Francis Is Gone Forever the Tooth Fairy himself, actor Tom Noonan, gets twenty-two minutes to really get into the nitty-gritty of what he tried to do with the character. He also talks about what it took to get into character and how that backfired on him when he went shopping one day. The Eye Of The Storm interviews Director Of Photography Dante Spinotti about what was involved in getting Mann's very specific intent for the look of the film just right. There's a lot of interesting talk here about the visuals, the camerawork, specific set ups and more. If you're into the technical side of things, be sure to take the time to watch this one. In the forty-two minute long The Music Of Manhunter we hear from composer Michel Rubini, Shriekback's Barry Andrews and a few other musicians - Rick Shaffer of The Reds, Gene Stashuk of Red 7 and the guys from The Prime Movers - that were involved in creating the now fairly iconic score that plays such a huge part in the success of the film. No to be outdone, in the forty minute featurette entitled The First Lecktor we hear from none other than Brian Cox about his work bringing Hannibal Lecktor to life on the big screen for the very first time. He's got a lot of great stories here about the research that he did to make his performance work the way it does, what it was like working with Mann as well as his co-stars and why he didn't wind up reprising the character when Jonathan Demme made The Silence Of The Lambs. Each one of these interviews is totally worth your time, they're substantive and interesting and they do a great job of detailing what went into making this criminally underrated film.
Additionally we get a nice still gallery, a theatrical trailer for the feature, menus and chapter selection.
Disc Two (Director's Cut):
Extras on the second disc begin with the commentary track with Michael Mann that was recorded in 2003 for Anchor Bay's Divimax DVD release of Manhunter. While there are spots where Mann goes quiet for a little longer than you might like, when he's on he's on and he's a pretty interesting guy to listen to. He talks about why this is his preferred cut of the movie, his thoughts on serial killers, what he was going for when writing the script based off of Harris' book, his thoughts on the performances, the music, the cinematography and quite a bit more.
The rest of the extras on this disc are all carried over from the aforementioned Anchor Bay 2-disc DVD release from 2001, starting with The Manhunter Look which is a ten minute interview with Spinotti that covers a lot of the same ground as his interview on the first disc. It's still great to see it included here, along with the seventeen minute long Inside Manhunter which is an interesting making of featurette that includes what were at the time newly shot interviews with Petersen, Allen, Cox and Noonan.
If for some reason you don't want to watch the Director's Cut in HD with SD inserts, a standard definition version is also included on this second disc. Again, menus and chapter stops are included. Both discs fit inside a standard size Blu-ray keepcase that contains reversible cover art with Shout!'s newly commissioned artwork on one side and the original poster art on the flip side. This fits inside a cardboard slipcover.
The Final Word:
Manhunter may be forever doomed to live in the shadow of The Silence Of The Lambs but don't let that stop you from seeking it out - this is a great movie. The film is tense, well-paced, it features some excellent performances and while it certainly does look like the product of the eighties that it is, it's beautifully put together. The good people at Shout! Factory have done an excellent job bringing the film to Blu-ray on this feature-packed special edition release. Highly recommended.
Click on the images below for full sized Blu-ray screen caps!
