Manhunter (Michael Mann, 1986)

Only rarely are movie sequels either critically or commercially more successful than their originals. Usually, as the Roman numerals mount up on the route to straight-to-video-hell, original ideas are diluted, stars on their way up are replaced by stars on their way down, and budgets are pruned to the bone.

The movie version of The Silence of the Lambs was one of the few exceptions to this rule, and its box office success, five Oscars and mountain of critical plaudits have overshadowed Dr Hannibal Lecter's first celluloid outing in Manhunter (adapted from Thomas Harris's second novel, The Red Dragon) ever since. But Michael Mann's movie, recently reissued by Anchor Bay in a "limited edition" DVD box set (limited in the Franklin Mint sense: the edition size is a respectable 100,000), is no quota quickie. There are three solid central performances, Mann's trademark glossily rapt attention to detail, and a sharp, fast-paced script that cleaves closely to the core of Harris's bestseller.

Retired agent Will Graham (William Petersen), physically and mentally injured after he captured Dr Hannibal Lecktor (sic), is recruited by former boss Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) to track down the Tooth Fairy (Ted Noonan), a psychopath who murders an entire family each full moon. Dogged by odious tabloid reporter Freddie Lounds (Stephen Long), Graham, who works by intuition and empathy, visits Lecktor (Brian Cox) to renew his sense of the psychopathic mindset, but Lecktor, eager for revenge, begins a deadly cat-and-mouse game by sending Graham's home address to the Tooth Fairy. Although Mann foregrounds state of the art forensic techniques, most notably in a bravura sequence as FBI agents race to analyze a note found in Lecktor's cell, Graham's pursuit of the Tooth Fairy is subtler and more cerebral than the usual police procedural. The Tooth Fairy, given a fine mix of arrogance and anguish by Noonan, is a true monster, engaged in a great work of 'becoming' inspired by William Blake's watercolour 'The Great Red Dragon and the Woman Clothed in the Sun', yet still possessed by the vestiges of ordinary human impulses. Diverted from the next family he has targeted by a brief romance with a blind woman, Reba (Joan Allen), he sees possible redemption in her unexpected affection ("You look so good in the sun," he tells her, after their tryst), but in the end his frail hope of becoming something other than what he is can't withstand an instant of jealous rage.

Petersen brings a quiet intensity to his part, most notably in the scene where, running two home movies in parallel, he at last realises how the Tooth Fairy has chosen his victims, while Brian Cox is sardonically playful as Lecktor, a devilish mentor who taunts Graham as he is drawn deeper and deeper into the psychological universe of the Tooth Fairy. Although Cox can be an intimidatingly physical actor, Mann shoots him mostly in repose in a sterile white cell; his commanding gaze and nimble delivery intimates a quick, clever mind that in the end has trapped itself.

This is a movie whose plot turns upon seeing -- Graham finally understands the Tooth Fairy by seeing the same home movies that he saw, a nice doubling of the psychopath's voyeurism; the Tooth Fairy, obsessed with mirrors, needs to see himself in the context of an ordinary family, even if he has to kill them to stage his tableaux. Cinematographer Dante Spinotti lights key scenes of ordinary intimacy with sharp blue tones, as if menaced by the killer's Moon, while Mann's framing of Graham and his family against a sunny ocean skyline is echoed both by a long shot of the Tooth Fairy and Reba embracing against a red dawn, and by a huge poster of a sunrise in the Tooth Fairy's lair -- no ordinary, earthly sunrise, it's on Mars, neatly implying the distance between the Tooth Fairy's mind and those of ordinary people.

Manhunter is presented in a crisp widescreen (2.35:1) transfer of the American theatrical release, with a Dolby Surround 5.1 audiotrack, two short featurettes on its making, a muddled theatrical trailer, and a limited number of talent biographies; the keepcase contains 24 pages of photographs and other material in a miniature folder. A second disc contains the problematical 'director's cut', a slightly extended version produced for cable TV with grainier visuals than the theatrical release. Most of the four minutes of additional material underlines speculation about the Tooth Fairy's motivation, although a slight expansion of a scene in which Graham reluctantly explains what happened to Lector's victims usefully rectifies a fluffed bit of dubbing in the theatrical version, and there's also an unconvincing scene where, in the aftermath, Graham visits the family who would have been next on the Tooth Fairy's list.

In neither version is a key fragment of dialogue quoted by Andy Black in his booklet notes, in which Graham defines his feelings towards the Tooth Fairy and shows that his resolve has not been weakened by his empathy: "My heart bleeds for him as a kid. Someone took a kid and manufactured a monster. At the same time, as an adult he's irredeemable. He butchers whole families to pursue trivial fantasies. As an adult someone should blast the sick fuck out of his socks." This speech was in the British theatrical release, although that is shorter than the US theatrical release. Perhaps the meticulous Michael Mann could at some stage sort out a final version; meanwhile, the Anchor Bay package, despite a mostly redundant second disc, is a fine presentation of an undeservedly neglected movie.

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