Someone took a little boy and turned him into a monster (Manhunter (DVD))

Member Name: Silent Bob

Product:	Manhunter (DVD)
Date:	06/02/01 (92 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Good performance from cast

Disadvantages: wrong cut of films, bad picture quality on directors cut

What with Hannibal about to open at the cinema worldwide and the Criterion DVD of Silence of the Lambs going out of print, what better time could there be for Anchor Bay to release their DVD version of Manhunter. Anchor Bay have released two version of Manhunter on is only the theatrical with all the extras the other comes with a second disk containing the directors cut of the film, I am reviewing the two disk set which was also limited to only 100,000 copies. Manhunter is the first time we get to Hannibal Lecter on the big screen as Manhunter is based on the Thomas Harris book Red Dragon. Manhunter was released in 1986 but features Lector as Lecktor and is played by Brian Cox and to tell the truth Lector is only in the film for a total screen time of around 10 minutes.

The story begins with FBI agent Jack Crawford (Dennis Farina) going to get his friend Will Graham (William L. Petersen) to help him capture a serial killer named ‘The Tooth Fairy’ (Tom Noonam). Graham is a retired FBI man hunter, who quit after nearly going mad catching Hannibal Lector and is reluctant to help having a family and his health to look after. So Graham, starts to build his profile of the killer but every lead hits a dead end and he decides to go to Hannibal Lecter for help. Lector agrees to give the killer's file a look, but as he does so he once again begins to play with Will's mind. When Will was tracking down Lecter he trained himself to start thinking like Lecter in order to learn what his next step might be. Obviously it took a mental strain on Will, and Lecter is now bringing up those painful memories all over again.

Manhunter is a great thriller that moves at a superb pace, mixing in the atmosphere it builds with some superb set pieces of action and has a scary looking bad guy. Its very similar to Silence of the Lambs in both style and storyline, with Lecter helping to catch another bad guy but ultimately wrecking havoc in the mind of the age
nt he his helping, but it is also to separate the two films for you to notice how much better of a film Manhunter is. As I mentioned before though in Manhunter Hannibal Lector is only a bit player but it is a good introduction to the character and we get brief glimpses of his power.

Michael Mann does a great job of directing the movie and brings a lot of the Miami Vice trademarks with him, the film even has a semi-rock soundtrack similar to the one found on Miami Vice. The film takes a very strong visual style and tends to slowly build up the tension through its dark atmosphere and this finally comes to a head in the great climax of the film. The stand out performances of the film is William Petersen’s Will Graham, who brings across the look of the physical and mentally drained FBI agent. He delivers lines with the right amount of style and heart that he makes you think he really cares. Brian Cox plays Hannibal and in my opinion gives a far better performance than Anthony Hopkins, he doesn’t play Hannibal over the top as Hopkins but makes Hannibal seem very laid back and intelligent.

The events in this film occur before the events in Silence of the Lambs. Although there are several characters common to both films, there are only two actors who appear in both movies. Ironically, they both play different characters in both films. Frankie Faison plays Lt Fisk in Manhunter, and Barney in Silence of the Lambs, and Dan Butler plays an FBI fingerprint expert in Manhunter, and an entomologist in Silence of the Lambs, Originally was to be titled "Red Dragon" after the novel, but when Year of the Dragon flopped, Dino de Laurentiis decided to avoid a "dragon" title.
The picture quality of the disks is very, very different. The theatrical cut on the first disk comes in anamorphic widescreen in its original 2.35:1 aspect ratio. The image is generally sharp but grain starts to appear on some scenes. The colours are all brigh
t and strong and never blur into each other and this is good as a lot of the film is at night. The director’s cut however is one of the worst transfers to be on DVD, the transfer was taken from the only remaining source of the print which was a video copy so much couldn’t be expected here, there is at off grain, the colours are all faded and detail in the background is impossible to see. The sound on both disks is decent, but the theatrical cut has Dobly Digital 5.1, which is perfectly clear.

The directors cut is 3 minutes longer than the theatrical cut but it’s not just an extra three minutes stuck on the end, the directors cut has some scenes removed, some moved around and some extended or even some entire new scenes. One scene that has been entirely removed is following Graham's first look at the Leeds' House the scene where Graham arrives at the hotel.

The first extra scene is actually a different version of the Atlanta Police briefing room scene. In this version, Graham comes to the front of the room and gives his thoughts on what sort of person the 'Tooth Fairy' is. Next is a phone conversation between Will and Molly demonstrates the strain on their relationship. Another extra scene sees Graham talking to Dr Fredrick Chilton prior to his meeting with Lecter. We see Chilton lay down some ground rules and also pushes Graham on the matter of how he caught Lecter. This is an obnoxious Chilton who more closely resembles the character as portrayed in The Silence of the Lambs.
A few extra lines of dialogue are reinstated during the face-to-face meeting between Graham and Lecter. Will meets the estate agent Geehan at the Jacobi house prior to checking out the grounds at the rear. At the end of the scene were Lounds interviews Will Graham there is an extension to the dialogue between Graham and Crawford. Graham is informed that Crawford has arranged for Molly to come to town. Inserted between the scene were Graham
and Spurgen talk through the planned ambush of the Tooth Fairy and the ambush scene itself is an added scene with Molly and Will in the hotel bedroom. Of interest here is that we
discover how they met. Just a few a seconds added when Graham re-visits the Leeds' House.
Rather than the scene starting inside the house, Graham is seen to be entering from outside in the pouring rain. After Graham leads Reba out of Dolarhyde's house, a segment of dialogue is removed where Reba asks Graham who he is. The short scene of Crawford joining Graham on Dolarhyde's jetty is also removed. Presumably because the re-inserted scene that follows is set at night and the jetty scene is in broad daylight.

On the disk there is also a documentary feature called The Manhunter Look, which is a conversation with cinematographer Dante Spinotti that is around 10 minutes long. Here he discusses why and how he got involved with the film, his colour choices, his filming style and the ideas he brought to the film. He manages to fit a lot of information into the 10 minutes it runs and it is certainly an interesting viewing.

A second documentary named Inside Manhunter is also present running in at around 18 minutes. This one focuses on interviews with William Petersen (Will Graham), Joan Allen, Brian Cox (Hannibal Lecter) and Tom Noonan (The Tooth Fairy). Here they tell us how they got the parts, why they changed the title of the film from Red Dragon to Manhunter, what they thought of Michael Mann and how they researched their parts. I enjoyed seeing the actors reminisce and give their thoughts on various aspects of the movie.

On the downside Anchor Bay have really messed up the cut of the film used for the theatrical cut and have put a cut version in. One of the most memorable scenes is now missing from both version of the film here and DEFINELTY should be present in the theatrical cut. The scenes missing are one when Will Graham says ‘Someone to
ok a kid and manufactured monster’ and near the end were he tells a fellow FBI agent he wants to ‘blow the guy out of his socks’. It has been confirmed that Michael Mann did not do this and they have simply used the wrong cut of the film, so basically this is NOT the theatrical cut as advertised. Not only this but Anchor Bay also go on to botch up the Directors Cut as the only remaining source for it was a zoomed in full-frame transfer that Anchor Bay then went on to simply matt 2.35:1 black bars over this and hence cut part of the picture off the top and bottom.

We also have a trailer and the talent bios for the cast, but with the two-disk version you also get a cool looking booklet. It is made to look like a FBI case folder and upon opening it there are 24 pages of rare photos and information. The folder even comes with real looking doodles and writing by Graham. Apart from this booklet the extras between the two versions are the same.

So in total save some of your money and buy the cheaper single disk version of Manhunter. While the film would get around 4 or 5 stars the DVD is a real let down because of all the mistakes made.

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