Episode 92 - Manhunter
This week the boys bring you stylised sets, blue lighting filters, Brian Cox firing shots at Johnny Depp and a quiz about Tooth Fairy Films with 1986's Manhunter.
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Manhunter is a 1986 American thriller film directed and written by Michael Mann. Based on the 1981 novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris, it stars William Petersen as FBI profiler Will Graham. Also featured are Tom Noonan as serial killer Francis Dollarhyde, Dennis Farina as Graham's FBI superior Jack Crawford, and Brian Cox as incarcerated killer Hannibal Lecktor. The film focuses on Graham coming out of retirement to lend his talents to an investigation on Dollarhyde, a killer known as the Tooth Fairy. In doing so, he must confront the demons of his past and meet with Lecktor, who nearly killed Graham.
Manhunter focuses on the forensic work carried out by the FBI to track down killers and shows the long-term effects that cases like this have on profilers such as Graham, highlighting the similarities between him and his quarry. The film features heavily stylized use of color to convey this sense of duality, and the nature of the characters' similarity has been explored in academic readings of the film. It was the first film adaptation of Harris' Hannibal Lecter novels, as well as the first adaptation of Red Dragon, which later became the basis for a film of the same name in 2002.
Opening to mixed reviews, Manhunter fared poorly at the box office at the time of its release, making only $8.6 million in the United States. However, it has been reassessed in more recent reviews and now enjoys a more favorable reception, as both the acting and the stylized visuals have been appreciated better in later years. Its resurgent popularity, which may be due to later adaptations of Harris' books and Petersen's success in CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, has seen it labelled as a cult film.
