Manhunter (film)

Manhunter
The film's poster. Petersen's face is in silhouette at the top, along with the tagline "It's just you and me now, sport". Below this is a silhouette of Noonan standing in a doorway with a flashlight. The film's title is along the bottom in orange lettering.
Theatrical release poster
Directed byMichael Mann
Screenplay byMichael Mann
Based onRed Dragon
by Thomas Harris
Produced byRichard A. Roth
Starring
CinematographyDante Spinotti
Edited byDov Hoenig
Music by
Production
companies
Distributed byDe Laurentiis Entertainment Group
Release date
  • August 15, 1986 (1986-08-15)
Running time
120 minutes[1]
CountryUnited States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$14–15 million[2]
Box office$8.6 million[3][4]

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. 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.

  1. ^ "Manhunter (18)". British Board of Film Classification. December 2, 1986. Retrieved October 5, 2016.
  2. ^ Lindsey, Craig D. (August 16, 2021). "Thirty-Five Years Ago, Manhunter Quietly Set the Scene for Things to Come". Paste. Archived from the original on January 29, 2023. Retrieved April 22, 2023.
  3. ^ "Manhunter (1986)". The Numbers. Nash Information Services, LLC. Retrieved July 22, 2024.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference BOM was invoked but never defined (see the help page).