Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		4.0
Overall		4.0

Manhunter Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman May 21, 2016

In the annals of the modern horror film, there’s probably no actor more associated with a single role than Anthony Hopkins is with Hannibal Lecter. Hopkins famously won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his portrayal of Lecter in The Silence of the Lambs, and then went on to reprise the role in Hannibal and Red Dragon. Fans of Thomas Harris’ source novels will know that Red Dragon was in fact a remake of the film that introduced Lecter (spelled Lecktor for some unfathomable reason) to audiences, Michael Mann’s 1986 opus Manhunter. As I discussed in my Red Dragon Blu-ray review, there are some fascinating differences between the two films which ostensibly are telling the same story, and as I also mentioned in my interview with Martha de Laurentiis (one tied to television’s Hannibal: Season One, a series which ultimately revisited Red Dragon for a third time), Manhunter is a personal favorite of mine. The film is relentlessly stylish in the typical Mann way, something that may seem to diffuse the inherent horror in the story of Lecter (Brian Cox) and FBI profiler Will Graham (William Petersen). Perhaps surprisingly, then, Manhunter is as disturbing as The Silence of the Lambs, albeit in a completely different fashion, and may well trump the efforts of Red Dragon, a reboot which is undeniably visceral and which benefits from Hopkins’ spooky presence but which never seems to generate the same general sense of angst that Manhunter does.

The fact that Hopkins is so resolutely associated with Lecter might lead some to believe that Manhunter must suffer due to the fact that Cox plays the role this time out. While few would probably argue that Hopkins crafts a more memorable performance, part of the reason for that is that the films featuring Hopkins focus on Lecter, while Manhunter is very much Graham’s story, making him the main course as it were, with the character of Lecter as an important but perhaps tangential digestif. What’s kind of interesting about this is that despite Mann’s stylistic flourishes, which are numerous, Petersen is at times almost somnambulant as Graham, offering an intentionally tamped down portrayal of a man trying to desperately not to just control events, but his own emotions.

Fans of the Hannibal television series who haven’t previously seen Manhunter will find it a fairly comfortable fit, probably more so than The Silence of the Lambs, for both the obvious fact that it offers Graham instead of Clarice Starling, but also because it tends to focus on Graham’s psychological scars as well as his increasing tendency to become rather like his prey. In this tale, Lecter (I’m going to use the “preferred” spelling despite the film’s choice) has been imprisoned for several years due to Graham’s investigatory prowess, though Graham is much the worse for wear due to the after effects of that very investigation. The film begins with Graham’s former superior Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) imploring Graham to help with a troubling new case that has the earmarks of serial murder. Graham’s wife Molly (Kim Greist) is none too pleased about all of this, worrying not just about her husband’s mental health but also the safety of her and their young son Kevin.

Lecter serves as a nefarious “technical consultant” of sorts as Graham attempts to profile a killer who has a number of nasty habits. Manhunter isn’t especially discursive about hiding the killer’s identity, and in fact part of the tension the film creates is because Francis Dollarhyde (Tom Noonan) has been shown in such an unvarnished way. The film’s famous set piece involving a journalist learning the hard way not to cross Dollarhyde remains one of the most riveting moments in the entire Lecter canon, and certainly in any of Mann’s films.

The film perhaps stumbles just a bit in its endgame, one which involves a blind coworker of Dollarhyde’s (played by Joan Allen) who gets mixed up with the killer, as well as Graham’s frantic attempts to figure out what the connective tissue (no horrifying pun intended) is between the victims. While Manhunter mostly avoids the cliché of putting Graham’s wife and son squarely in danger, things go a bit Grand Guignol in an over the top climax that plays to an Iron Butterfly tune. Mann’s stylish visuals keep Manhunter an unusually “scenic” horror thriller, but it’s the gravitas of the performances that really makes this film so visceral. Hopkins may be the “true” Lecter, but for many fans, the one and only Will Graham will always be William Petersen.

Manhunter Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Note: Screenshots 1-9 are from the Theatrical Version. Screenshots 10-18 are from the Director's Cut.

Manhunter is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Scream Factory, an imprint of Shout! Factory, with AVC encoded 1080p transfers in 2.35:1. How you feel about the video quality of this package as a whole will probably depend on whether you consider the Director's Cut a "supplement" or the "main feature", for the video quality of this version is distinctly inferior to that of the Theatrical Cut. That said, anomalies like minor telecine wobble and some occasionally ungainly grain management suggest to me that this is probably not a new master for the Theatrical Cut, though I have never seen the previous MGM release linked above (also available as part of The Hannibal Lecter Collection), nor the British release from a few years ago. That said, comparing screenshots between previous reviews and this release suggests no huge difference, though the palette seems perhaps just a bit incrementally warmer on this Scream version than the MGM (again, going solely by screenshots). As both Martin Liebman and Svet Atanasov have mentioned in their reviews, softness is regularly recurrent, and there may have been some minor high frequency filtering applied, but there's still a rather heavy grainfield on display throughout the presentation. Colors look natural, although a couple of really odd lighting choices, like the garish green of the first FBI field office scene, often paint flesh tones with almost sickly looking hues (look at Farina's face in screenshot 2 for a good example). Detail levels are generally fine if never overwhelmingly great. The bright outdoor scenes pop the best, as should be expected, offering a clear uptick in sharpness and detail.

The Director's Cut, on the other hand, is a decidedly less pleasurable viewing experience, seemingly cobbled together from a number of different sources, some of which are at the very least secondary (I'm tempted to say tertiary) film elements and perhaps even old uprezzed video. Compare, for example, screenshot 6 and 16 for one sign of the differences. There's more noise in this presentation and some very clumpy and unnatural looking grain. At other times this version is for all intents and purposes identical to the Theatrical Version. The "good news", if it can be deemed such, is that many will find the Theatrical Version the better film in any case, with the Director's Cut an "alternate universe" that may not pay that many dividends in the long run.

Manhunter Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Both versions of the film sport DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 and 2.0 tracks. The 5.1 version certainly ups the ante for the pulsing, very 80s sounding music (despite older source cues being utilized), and in fact there are times when I personally wished the score and/or source cues had been mixed a little lower. There's just a slightly phased quality to some of the effects in the 5.1 mix (listen, for example, to the "waves" in the opening moments of the film), but dialogue routinely sounds fine and there's decent placement of surround effects in several scenes. The 2.0 version offers what is probably a more balanced and better prioritized accounting of dialogue, effects and score, though it lacks the really fulsome low end of the surround track. Fidelity is fine all around, and dynamic range quite wide.

Manhunter Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Theatrical Version (1080p; 2:00:03)

• The Making of Manhunter includes:

  The Mind of Madness: Interview with Actor William Petersen (1080p; 18:16)

  Courting a Killer: Interview with Actor Joan Allen (1080p; 15:54)

  Francis is Gone Forever: Interview with Actor Tom Noonan (1080p; 22:03)

  The Eye of the Storm: Interview with Director of Photography Dante Spinotti (1080p; 35:56)

• The Music of Manhunter (1080p; 42:22) includes interviews with composer Michel Rubini and several others who contributed to the score.


• The First Lecktor: An Interview with Brian Cox (1080p; 40:29)


• Theatrical Trailer (1080p; 2:05)


• Still Gallery (1080p; 8:28)

Director's Cut (1080p; 2:04:19)

• Director's Cut (Standard Definition) (480i; 2:04:12) is presumably included so that the entire presentation looks as bad as the shoddier elements in the HD version (that is a joke, in case it's not clear).


• The Manhunter Look: A Conversation with Cinematographer Dante Spinotti (1080i; 10:04)


• Inside Manhunter (1080i; 17:17) features William Petersen, Joan Allen, Brian Cox and Tom Noonan.


• Commentary with Writer/Director Michael Mann

Manhunter Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

If you only know Hannibal Lecter via Anthony Hopkins or the television series, you're in for a treat (so to speak) with Manhunter, though it should be understood that this film is less about the good (?) doctor than profiler Will Graham. Moody but unbelievably scenic, Manhunter develops incredible tension despite a hero who's loathe to show any emotion. Technical merits vary here, but as with most Scream releases, the supplemental package is excellent. Recommended.