You Know What's Great? Manhunter

I saw Manhunter for the first time in 1987, a banner year for me film wise. I was treated to a 10th birthday screening of Robocop and caught Predator with my old man on Father's Day. We also had a subscription to HBO, off which my father and I compiled 3 film VHS dubs using our top loader VCR. It was glorious to be able to endlessly watch films such as Road Warrior, Rocky 4 and Rambo: First Blood Part 2 unhindered by network editing or commercial interruptions. I discovered Manhunter on one of these tapes and instantly fell in love with its "Miami Vice but grittier" vibe. I loved Miami Vice, the pastel fashions, the Jan hammer music, you name it. Everything about that show defined my 10 year old interpretation of what cool is. Don Johnson's rolled up sleeves sports jacket (a look I shamefully tried to rock myself) wearing, chain smoking, hard ass, high strung Sonny Crockett was in my eyes the epitome of total bad assery, so imagine how floored I was when introduced to William Petersen's Will Graham.

Something about the aloof way Petersen played this damaged detective captured my imagination. An anti-hero if ever there was one, Will Graham seems detached to the point of robotic disinterest in human connection, even when it comes to his own wife and son. An abundant, unruly salt and pepper mane crowning his perma stubble'd face with big, sad, deep set eyes disturbed by what he's seen, shielding others from the thoughts he's had. Just plain cool as hell is what I'm getting at here, even in the pink short shorts he rocks during family beach time. He reluctantly agrees to assist in the investigation of the tooth fairy murders, but once that darkness creeps back in, he's drowning in grim determination. A sick cypher of the criminal mind unable to alter his collision course destiny.

Will Graham makes Sonny Crockett look like the coked up pansy he is. Will Graham doesn't have time for sports cars and speed boat ownership. He doesn't have a pet crocodile and he isn't surrounded by babes in neon pink thongs. He spends his time alone in a Marriot suite, talking to VHS tapes of murdered families in the voice of the killer he's hunting. He sits quietly in evidence lockers absentmindedly fondling the slip of the Jacoby woman, the one with the bloom on her. Will Graham grapples with the cavernous abyss of the human soul at its most degraded, dangerous and evil. He never smiles, he never laughs and he never lets down his guard, whether talking to incarcerated cannibals or his 10 year old son.

Brian Cox is solid, if underused as Lecktor. A few more scenes with Petersen wouldn't have been that garish an addition, especially considering the delightfully frosty chemistry they have in their back and forth. Dennis Farina makes an interesting Jack Crawford, but seems miscast with his beat cop mustache from which no light can escape. Stephen Lang is textbook perfect as the snivelling reporter Lounds, but the real casting gold is to be found in Petersen's nemesis, the Tooth fairy killer, played with delicate menace by hulking, 6 foot, 7 inch Tom Noonan. This was my introduction to Noonan, one of the great off kilter presences in film. His Francis Dollarhyde is pitiable, terrifying and bizarre beyond belief.

This is a film where little in the way of action occurs. It's all about atmosphere, psychology and the nuts and bolts of police work. A moody procedural piece drenched in synth tones and bathed in ethereal light. White light emanating from fantasised eyes and back lit secret kisses born of imagined trysts. It is a wealth of fetishised voyeurism from the nether regions of a diseased mind, served up with a dollop of elegant art direction and scored with hypnotic, casual nonchalance. As much as I love Heat and as many gaps as I have in his filmography, Manhunter will always be my favorite Michael Mann film. It affected me so profoundly at such an early age and I have revisited it so many times over the last 24 years that it is permanently encoded in my DNA. I have a deep, abiding personal connection to it.

That long standing connection is why I choose not to recognize the Bret Ratner directed Red Dragon. Sure, Fiennes is great as Dollarhyde, but his performance wilts when stacked up next to Noonan's. Edward Norton can't deign to carry a 1986 William Petersen's jock when it comes to dishing out the wounded charisma. The Lecktor scenes feel forced, shoehorned in to capitalize on Hopkin's popular success in the role as opposed to the organic manner the character fits into Manhunter's narrative. It's redundant and predictable in its choices, right up to a cliched, fake out house explosion ending. No, you needn't watch Red Dragon when something as authentically unnerving as Manhunter exists.