Manhunter

Manhunter (1986) begins with a retired FBI profiler being called back. Will Graham catches killers by imitating the way they think, a method that once put him in hospital. He returns for a new serial killer and goes for advice to the man he caught before, Hannibal Lecktor, in prison. This is the first film appearance of that character. The source is Thomas Harris's novel Red Dragon, and the film was made in 1986, five years before The Silence of the Lambs. Brian Cox plays Lecktor, spelled that way here. His reading is nothing like Anthony Hopkins's: not theatrical but ordinary, and unnerving for exactly that reason. Michael Mann directed. The visual language rests almost entirely on colour; every location is painted in one dominant shade and the character's state moves with the room. The film failed commercially and went unnoticed. Its reputation was built later as the Hannibal franchise grew. The novel was filmed again in 2002 as Red Dragon. It runs 120 minutes. Good for: serial killer procedurals, the formalism of eighties cinema, and Michael Mann. Less good for: the synthesiser score and the fashion date it hard, which pulls some viewers out. The passages devoted to the killer's inner life slow the pace, and the ending is rushed.