Manhunter (1986)
- written February 2003
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Jack Crawford is sending in his best man to catch a serial killer before he kills again. But the recruit, Will Graham is retired for a reason – he can’t take the emotional strain nor the physical vulnerabilities to his family. But this killer, the Tooth Fairy, is biting, murdering and maiming whole families and if Will doesn’t stop it, perhaps no one will. But to get through this, Will may have to enlist the help of his arch-nemesis, Hannibal Lector, to do this and once the Cannibal gets inside your head, you may end up insane.
Overall: The movie is only interesting because of the notoriety the sequel (Silence of the Lambs) received. Brian Cox as “Lecter” just isn’t even remotely convincing compared to Hopkins. But that’s not what makes this film an unfortunate waste of time. The book really pursues the character of the Tooth Fairy (ala Francis Dolarhyde) and tries to show the reader who he is, what his history is, and why he does what he does. But the film, along with renaming many of the characters (including respelling Lecter’s name as “Lecktor”) eliminates much of the story involving Dolarhyde. It skims through the romance with Reba and then tries reorganize some events into different order. The film comes off as almost being more about the romance between Molly and Will rather than the mind games between Dolarhyde, Lecter and Graham. They eliminated much of the Tattler letters, the call from Dolarhyde to Graham, and completely rewrote much of what Lecter did to get into Will’s mind. I will grant you that the movie was a full 2 hours with the stuff they kept but they left out way too much. Did you catch the fact that Frankie Faison in the films as a cop (he played “Barney the Orderly” in the other films). How about Chris Elliot? I think the book is much better than the film – what amazes me though is that the way Lecter treated Jack Crawford (ala communicating with Dolarhyde), Jack would try and use him again in “Silence” – and given how sneaky Lecter was in this story, how can Thomas expect us to believe Lecter will be all nice and helpful in “Silence”? Comparison: CSI meets Law and Order |
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