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Year One
Stars indicate the most critically-acclaimed movies.
Manhunter
EMAILPRINTAnchor Bay Entertainment
Generally favorable reviews
Based on 10 critic reviews
How did we calculate this?
Based on 5 votes
Read user comments
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Movie Info
Genre(s): Suspense/Thriller
Written by:
Thomas Harris (novel)
Michael Mann
Directed by: Michael Mann
Release Date:
Theatrical: August 22, 1986
DVD: January 30, 2001
Running Time: 119 minutes, Color
Origin: USA
Summary
RATING: R
Starring William L. Petersen, Kim Greist, Joan Allen, Brian Cox, Dennis Farina, Stephen Lang, Tom Noonan, and David Seaman
FBI Agent Will Graham (Petersen) has captured the diabolical Dr. Hannibal Lecter (Cox), nearly losing more than just his mind in the process. But when Graham is called out of retirement to hunt the psychopath known as "The Tooth Fairy" (Noonan) he must once again confront the horrors of "Hannibal The Cannibal". If Will Graham enters the mind of the serial killer, can he ever come back? (Anchor Bay Entertainment)
Also On Metacritic
FILM: Ali Collateral Heat Miami Vice Public Enemies The Insider
Also On The Web: Internet Movie Database View The Trailer
What The Critics Said
All critic scores are converted to a 100-point scale. If a critic does not indicate a score, we assign a score based on the general impression given by the text of the review. Learn more...
Salon.com Allen Barra
The best Hannibal Lecter movie and one of the greatest suspense movies ever made... A lurid masterpiece that pays homage to the seductiveness of pulp, not by dressing it in the trappings of fine art but by stripping it to the essentials of what we responded to in the material in the first place.
Read Full Review >Film Threat Dave Beuscher
As with all of Mann's films, Manhunter is an intense experience. All of the actors, including even legendary goofball Chris Elliott, give brooding, serious performances.
Read Full Review >The Onion (A.V. Club) Keith Phipps
Mann takes all the instincts he learned as a Miami Vice producer and trims them of their excesses, and the result is an unsettling thriller whose detached style perfectly complements its psychological intensity.
Read Full Review >Chicago Tribune Gene Siskel
William L. Petersen (''To Live and Die in L.A.”) gives another mesmerizing, seeming nonperformance as the brilliant agent on the trail of a serial killer who has murdered families in the South. [29 Aug 1986]
Entertainment Weekly Marc Bernardin
The brilliance of Michael Mann's Manhunter is that it appreciates that the true nexus of humanity is our shared closeness.
Read Full Review >TV Guide Staff (Non Credited)
Petersen is superb as the obsessive investigator who risks madness each time he takes on a case, and Tom Noonan is absolutely chilling as the psycho killer.
Read Full Review >Variety Staff (Not Credited)
An unpleasantly gripping thriller... Interesting Hitchcockian guilt transference territory and Mann's grip on his material is tight and sure. Director is at all times preoccupied by visual chic.
Read Full Review >Chicago Reader Pat Graham
I'm rather intrigued with what Mann does with his stylistic envelope: it's simultaneously hypnotic and enervating, meditative and empty, like a white-noise background or a field of electronic snow on the tube.
Read Full Review >Los Angeles Times Sheila Benson
With Manhunter, there seems to be some danger that style has overrun content, leaving behind a vast, chic, well-cast wasteland. [15 Aug 1986]
San Francisco Chronicle Steve Winn
Without a compelling - and convincingly compelled - character at its center, the details in this film lack an agonizing drop-by-drop tension. The various pieces fall apart like the shattered mirrors that figure in the crimes. [15 Aug 1986]
What Our Users Said
The average user rating for this movie is 8.6 (out of 10) based on 5 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
Pat C. gave it an 8:
Noonan plays a truly spiritually frightening dude. The Hannibal films that followed pay due homage to director Michael Mann. Never one to shy away from the dark side of human nature, he once again establishes that evil cannot be confronted until it is understood. That understanding flows from a world that is not necessarily twisted, but always is matter-of-fact. Unfortunately, this film introduced the My-family's-in-peril-I-must-become-Executioner device now never out of stock on Hollywood's formula shelf.
Andrew M. gave it a 9:
No hamming it up by any of the actors, they do whats asked of them by the script and folllow it. the B movie dialogesque overtones give more credibilty then trite, smoothly stiched dialogue found in recent thrillers. Casting was excellent, it shows a fluid process flow of law enforcement that probably doesnt exist but should be expected.
Yoon C. gave it a 6:
Effective but hollow, slick and soulless. Michael Mann as director is too enamoured of what might be called the Armani decorum and yuppie office building lighting. A minimalist exercise, a glasswork than a mirror reflecting human motivations. William Peterson does a creditable job but this pales in comparison to the other Peterson film of the same period, Friedkin's masterpiece To Live and Die in LA.
Rod L. gave it a 10:
By far the best of the Hannibal Lechter movies, due in no small part to Brian Cox, who played the killer not as a slithering over-the-top caricature, but as a very devious, very deceptive genius. William Petersen's profiler is a worthy opponent for the psychopath, not begging for clues (a la Edward Norton) but using Lechter as a way into his own dark recesses. A stylish thriller not to be missed.
