Manhunter

Michael Mann, USA 1986, 119 minutes

A man of fearsome intelligence, well read, charming, resourceful, manipulative and one of America's most feared serial killers. Brian Cox plays the expert serial killer Hannibal Lektor who is enlisted to help ex-FBI agent Will Graham (William Petersen) catch the latest in the long cinematic line of terrorising killers.

Manhunter, sequelled by The Silence of the Lambs, is a gripping, disturbing exploration of the mind of an individual who is obviously intelligent but uses this intelligence to select and murder his victims with deliberate care. Petersen's character is so obsessed with the psyche of the killer that it raises questions on the division between rationality and sanity, and on whether murderous intent loiters unbenownst inside each and every one of us.

Directed and written by Michael Mann, from the book `Red Dragon' by Thomas Harris, this is a work of great care and attention, with quite a few surprises. The big-city backdrop provides a modern setting where it feels as if the architecture itself could be a suspect. Clever visual imagery, such as the white on white of Lektor in his cell, reminiscent of a surgeon in an operating theatre, reinforce the clinical manner in which both Lektor and the serial killer on the loose go about their actions.

"Functions both as a disturbing examination of voyerism and as an often almost unbearably grim suspenser... one of the most impressive American thrillers of the last `80s" - Time Out

Review by Scott Keir
Taken from EUFS Programme 1996-97