![]() ![]() Played to perfection by Tom Noonan, he’s possibly one of the most unsettling and downright odd murderers in all cinema. The film really clicks into gear, though, when the Tooth Fairy is properly introduced. Michael Mann’s fascination with procedure and the hunt for tiny scraps of evidence is infectious here, and Manhunter has since been cited as a major inspiration for hit shows such as CSI, in which Petersen also starred. Graham spends long stretches of the film in solitude, watching videotapes of the killer’s victim over and over again, or staring out into empty back gardens, combing them for clues. Petersen doesn’t get an opportunity to invest Graham with much light and shade, but he does succeed in giving him a memorably neurotic edge, as though he’s a mere hair’s width away from becoming as predatory as the killer he’s attempting to track down.ĭante Spinotti’s unusual framing and occasional, queasy hints of green – some shots look like a scrubbed-up homage to Suspiria – imply that both Lecktor and the Tooth Fairy’s psychosis is like a disease that Graham has to constantly stave off, a malaise that hangs over Manhunter’s lonely hotel rooms and cityscapes. Petersen’s performance isn’t the finest in the film, but it’s still a great one, and superior, I’d argue, to Edward Norton’s rather flat portrayal of the same character in Red Dragon. The New York Times, for example, wrote that he played Graham with “unmodulated self-absoption”. In 1986, some critics wrote disparagingly of Petersen’s performance. When Lecktor asks how the intellectually inferior cop had found his man, Graham curtly replies: “You have certain disadvantages. They don’t look like cop’s hands anymore.”), he has no answer, no witty retort to give, until the topic of conversation turns to Graham’s capture of Lecktor years earlier. When Lecktor gently teases Graham about his early retirement (“You’re very tan, Will. Placed in the same room as Lecktor, William Peterson’s haunted ex-cop seems almost lost, like a mumbling child. It’s clear, though, that he’d be more than capable of committing the unspeakable acts Thomas Harris would write about about in his later novels. ![]() “I wouldn’t want them to think I was dwelling on anything morbid.”). It’s not clear why Mann chose to misspell the cannibal’s name in his screenplay – subsequent films would correctly refer to him as Lecter – but their meeting is one of the film’s electrifying highpoints.īehind bars, Cox’s take on Lecktor is charming, even funny (“I don’t tear out the articles” he says off-handedly about the Tooth Fairy’s newspaper coverage. ![]() In an attempt to “get the old scent back”, Graham pays a visit to his old nemesis, Doctor Lecktor. He’s just about recovered from the physical and psychological injuries he suffered while arresting serial killer Hannibal Lecktor (Brian Cox) a few years earlier, so when his old boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) shows up asking for help with another murder case, Graham is initially reluctant to get involved.Įventually prodded back into action, Graham begins the hunt for a serial killer dubbed the Tooth Fairy who, in Graham’s own words, “Butchers whole families to fulfil some sick fantasy.” With the killer operating on a strict lunar cycle, Graham only has a few days to catch him before the next full moon. Will Graham (William Petersen), once one of the FBI’s most talented criminal profilers, is enjoying his early retirement at his family home in Florida. He brings a similar 80s machismo and cool air to Harris’ story, while sticking quite closely to the basics of the novel’s plot. Where Demme goes for shadows and dungeon-like interiors, Mann, aided by the startling cinematography of Dante Spinotti, opts for oppressive brightness, empty space and disconcerting splashes of colour.īefore Manhunter, Mann was well known as the showrunner on the cop show Miami Vice. It’s fascinating, in fact, to compare Michael Mann’s approach to Manhunter with Jonathan Demme’s treatment of The Silence Of The Lambs. ![]()
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