For fans of Michael Mann’s Manhunter, Christmas comes this year. For its 40th anniversary, Rialto Pictures and StudioCanal are releasing the 4K upgrade, Manhunter: The Final Cut. The film is receiving a limited theatrical run before its home video release in October.
The stunning 4K scan of the original 35mm negative was restored at L’Immagine Ritrovata in Bologna,Italy. This final cut is based on Michael Mann’s new reference edit.
The color gradings were done by Stefan Sonnenfeld and Michael Mann at Company3 in Los Angeles.
Sound restoration is by Audio Mechanics from an original 35mm magnetic 6-track printmaster to release a new 5.1 mix by Luke Schwartzweller at Fox.
Manhunter has never looked and sounded so clean.
Michael Mann’s enduring masterwork should have earned box office gold and taken its place on the Mount Rushmore of serial killer thrillers. Upon its release in August of 1986, the American moviegoing public wasn’t in the mood for Mann’s highly-stylized take on the popular Thomas Harris novel, Red Dragon. The picture received mixed reviews and little attention at the box office, fading quickly from theaters. Audiences missed out, as Michael Mann designed the most effective and thrilling film of its type.
Jonathan Demme’s 1991 adaptation of Harris’s Silence of the Lambs was showered with Oscars, good reviews, and millions at the box office. The film became a phenomenon (of sorts), smashing taboos and becoming the first “horror film” to win the Best Picture Academy Award. It’s a very good film with some great moments, but time has rightfully brought more appreciation for the undervalued Manhunter.
With its painstakingly artful design, perfect casting, and masterful storytelling, Manhunter stands as the definitive adaptation of Harris’s work. Without any fanfare, Mann’s film broken new ground, becoming the first crime picture to mix the intricacies of modern forensics with the unsettling psychological intensity of serial killer profilers. There have been many films like it, but none of them can match the mastery of Michael Mann’s perfectionism and dedication to the material.
After directing his critically acclaimed first feature, Thief, in 1981 and the studio-defiled box office bomb that was The Keep in 1983, Mann became executive producer of the stylistically ground-breaking television series, Miami Vice. Under Mann’s tutelage, the show felt cinematic. The uber-slick art direction, use of modern songs to create mood, and trend-setting wardrobe set the tone for many films and shows that followed; the stylistic influences bleeding into the videos featured on MTV.
As the years went on, many would giggle at the ultra-80s look and feel of Miami Vice. As with the decade itself, the series would fall into a kind of parodied remembrance. Back in 86, Michael Mann brought that same art deco, neo-noir, flair to Manhunter. Unfortunately, the picture’s design received the brunt of the criticism, with many using the tired argument of “style over substance.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
Manhunter is a tightly controlled thriller that uses its atmospheric power to distort the lines between evil and controlled madness.
The scene that best validates this statement comes when F.B.I. profiler Will Graham (William L. Petersen) visits Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox) to, “get the old scent back.” Graham was the man who caught Lecktor (this is the spelling in Mann’s film) and who nearly lost his own sanity after getting inside the brilliant murderer’s head.
Mann and Art Director Jack Blackman craft Lecktor’s cell as a cold, blank, purgatory with white walls and an uncomfortable metal bed. Glass encompasses the bars, with only a small opening just big enough to pass food trays and papers. All precautions are taken to keep the staff safe from the monster that exists inside.
Petersen and Cox’s first moments together are important and every bit as legendary as the famous scene between Al Pacino and Robert De Niro in Mann’s 1995 epic, Heat. In that film, two men find an uncomfortable middle ground. Each one sizes up the other culminating in a final realization that, although one is cop and one is criminal, they are more alike than it seems. In Manhunter, Will Graham was destroyed by his time inside Lecktor’s head, but has been lured back by his friend and former boss Jack Crawford (the excellent Dennis Farina) to help stop a killer of families. Seeing Lecktor brings back an unfortunately necessary trauma. Graham realizes those ugly feelings are still inside him, while Hannibal’s twisted mind games become a frightening battle for Graham’s psyche. Even now, he and Lecktor continue to have a connection.
As the film’s tagline stated, “Enter the mind of a serial killer… you may never come back.”
Anthony Hopkins won an Oscar for his admittedly creepy, but too obvious performance as Hannibal the Cannibal. Brian Cox was more nuanced and clinical. His Lecktor is too brilliant for Will Graham or the team of psychiatrists who now examine his mind. Through an almost Zen-like performance, Cox allows Lecktor to control the entire narrative. From his heavily guarded antiseptic cell, Hannibal Lecktor manipulates everyone involved; messaging the current killer, releasing personal information on those involved in the case, and pushing Graham closer to mental abyss. The performance is frightening in its deceptive simplicity.
Critics were mixed on William L. Petersen. Where some found the portrayal too mannered, I find it to be the actor’s finest. Petersen’s Graham is strong in conviction, but walks an unsteady path darkened by death. Petersen is mesmerizing, as he completely inhabits the character, wearing Graham’s pain like armor and managing to make something (ultimately) cool out of an F.B.I. agent and family man who has one foot firmly planted in the darkness.
The film’s killer is Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan), known as the “Tooth Fairy”, a man who murders entire families to help his “becoming.” Dollarhyde’s obsession to morph into his higher being is where the film sees fantasy being made real in the eyes of the beholder. The Tooth Fairy imagines himself a disciple of the Red Dragon, a Chinese mythology regarding desire also represented by a series of William Blake paintings titled, The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed with the Sun.
Noonan’s performance is that of a man disguised and a soul trapped. Dollarhyde cannot connect with humanity. In his twisted mind, he knows the “need” for his becoming and realizes that people are nothing to him; pawns who should cower at his presence and bow to his superiority. As the character warns Freddy Lounds (the tabloid reporter expertly played by Stephen Lang) “You are here to do one thing correctly. Tremble.”
When Dollarhyde finds a tragic connection with a blind woman (a striking Joan Allen), Noonan’s performance changes. The actor finds the last glimpses of humanity within such a psychopath, even managing a smile and a somewhat hopeful tone. We almost root for him to beat his demons and find the love and desire he longs to have. Mann and Noonan trick us into our own sympathy for the devil.
Manhunter’s screenplay connects Graham, Lecktor, and Dollarhyde through their “deceptive practices.” William Graham has a wife and son and is a respected profiler, but hides a darker mindset where the evil of man has taken residence. Hannibal Lecktor was a brilliant psychiatrist who hid the fact that he was a murderous cannibal. Francis Dollarhyde moves through his life almost unnoticed, yet no one can see the monster inside him that controls his every move.
These three exist in lives of ambiguity and concealment. By film’s end, their paths will have forever tethered them to one another.
Mann and cinematographer Dante Spinotti match Will Graham’s precision with their artful visual palettes. As he walks through the murder scene (The Leeds house where Dollarhyde slaughtered the family), Graham must reach deep into the killer’s fantasies. His first walk through is shocking, as Spinotti uses the darkness as a palpable fear. When Graham turns on the bedroom light, Spinotti’s camera embraces the brightness like a burning sun, causing the first shots bloodstained room to take our breath away.
It is here where both Graham and the audience realize the scope of the killers desires. As Will tells his wife Molly (Kim Griest, in her best role), “This killing… it’s gotta stop.”
When he later returns to the Leeds home, Will Graham has tapped into his darker mindset. He walks through the house, speaking not into his recording device, but to the killer. As he moves into the bedroom, Graham has mentally “linked” to The Tooth Fairy and begins to fully understand his actions.
Another of the film’s best lines compliments its most striking shot. Earlier, Graham tells his colleagues about the killer’s motives, “His act fuels his fantasies.” When Graham is in his second walk through of the Leeds murder scene, he sees it through the mind of the perpetrator. As he looks at the bed, a dreamlike representation of Mrs. Leeds slowly rises from the blankets, as light beams from her eyes and mouth. Graham now understands that The Tooth Fairy wants to be seen in his imagined majesty through the “mirrors” of his victims eyes. The moment is a disturbing and masterful culmination of Graham’s genius and the world of evil and death from which he will never escape.
Through a screenplay that infuses moments surrealism, Michael Mann crafts Manhunter as something more than a police procedural. The filmmaker’s unmistakable style molds Harris’s story into a film that is deeper and more personal. Will Graham isn’t a stereotypical hero. He’s damaged goods trying to keep his family and his sanity. His wife and son are scared by what happened to him after his capture of Dr. Lecktor. It is all he can do to regain balance and trust and forever bury his mental scars. Lecktor is a madman, but a brilliant mind. He respects and admires both Will and Dollarhyde, the latter bringing back Lecktor’s desire for blood. Francis Dollarhyde is a doomed man who laments the fact that he can never truly exist.
This is the mastery of character that Michael Mann would bring to all of his work and why his films are so unique.
Another of Manhunter’s unique qualities is its score. The use of Shriekback’s “This Big Hush” is a creepily human moment where the last ounce of humanity inside Dollarhyde is screaming to be released. The group’s piece, “Evaporation” is a hypnotic cut that fuels the dreamlike feeling as Graham walks the yard of the Leeds home, searching for answers.
Music from Kitarō and (especially) Iron Butterfly bring flare and emotion to their scenes, while The Reds and Michael Rubini do the heavy synth instrumentals. Their score is made up of entrancing ambient compositions that work in unison with Spinotti’s captivating visuals.
The film’s most powerful use of music comes in the form of the Prime Movers’ “Strong as I Am”. The song’s placement is striking, as it plays over the moment where the beast inside Dollarhyde finally overtakes him. It is a breathtaking cinematic vision that continues to thrill.
Regarding Manhunter: The Final Cut, there are slight differences, but the film hasn’t really changed.
The only negative would be the removal of Graham’s wife speaking the line, “Time is luck.” Mann has stated his dissatisfaction with the moment and thus removed it from his final version. Unfortunately, the line worked and is representative of a recurring theme throughout Mann’s filmography. The characters in Thief, Heat, Collateral, and The Insider are all victims of time. The tension found in these pictures is guided by an emphasis on the characters’ time and what they do within its boundaries.
The best choice made in the Final Cut restores one of the film’s best lines that was f(or some strange reason) excised for every version except for the original theatrical release.
As Graham and Crawford sit in a room trying to crack the case before the killer strikes under the full moon, Graham makes a statement that has Crawford question whether friend’s sympathies are finding their way to the killer. Graham responds, “My heart bleeds for him, as a child. Someone took a kid and manufactured a monster. At the same time, as an adult, he’s irredeemable… As an adult, someone should blow the sick fuck out of his socks.” This remarkable line perfectly captures Graham’s continuous struggle with his own duality.
The rest of the changes work well, including extra moments during the Atlanta police briefing and an other minute or two between Graham and Lecktor.
Manhunter: The Final Cut doesn’t alter the film, it merely adjusts. The director has given his classic a cinematic polish.
Michael Mann has made some great films, but nothing as groundbreaking as Manhunter. Keeping most of Thomas Harris’s novel (and mercifully changing the author’s ridiculous Jason Voorhees-esqe finale), the filmmaker crafted a thriller with unmistakable style and edge-of-your-seat intensity.
Mann is one of cinema’s true artists and his quest for perfection is felt in every frame of this thrilling and beautifully executed work of cinematic excellence.
Manhunter: The Final Cut opens at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD Friday July 31st and plays in limited release across the country through October. The following link is a list of the cities and dates where the film will be shown.
https://www.rialtopictures.com/catalogue/michael-manns-manhunter-the-final-cut
