Poll Position: Manhunter (1986)

The tie this week wasn't so much an even number of people wanting us to watch two movies, as it was one person in particular wanting us to watch one of the movies very badly. All the thanks for this can go to Jed for running a little Facebook campaign to get as many friends as he could to come here and vote for Manhunter on his behalf. He was determined to make it win over the popular Gone Baby Gone but he only managed to tie it. As a result, Puneet and I chose to split the movies up instead of both reviewing both films. Since Jed is my friend and he did all this to make me watch it, I went with Manhunter, which was perfectly fine to Puneet. Find my thoughts on this murder mystery after the jump.


The story here is another one about a serial killer on the loose, and the detective in charge must go to Dr. Hannibal Lecktor in jail for his assistance in understanding the mind of the killer on the loose. The detective is Will Graham and he's the one that put Lecktor away. Lecktor is never very cooperative though, and this time around he manages to get in contact with the new killer. Can Graham solve the case, find the killer, and stay out of Lecktor's sights before the next moon cycle is complete and the killer strikes again?

Will Graham played by a young William Peterson

The first thing I noticed about this movie is that it feels kinda like a really long episode of CSI. This is mainly because the lead is played by William Peterson, the man who helped make CSI a household name. In fact, the entire movie seemed to hold up to the idea that these were the younger, wilder years of that CSI character. He's a profiler, he gets into the minds of the serial killers he's after and it screws with his mind. Sounds an awful lot like Gil Grissom to me. There was even a line in which they ask him how his hearing is, and anyone who watched CSI knows that Grissom started having hearing problems later on. It's a conspiracy I tell you! Actually, it's far more likely that the character of Gil was modeled after Will Graham when they made the show.

Next we have the unmistakable name of Hannibal Lecktor. The only thing is, it role wasn't played by Anthony Hopkins, but instead by Brian Cox. He did do a good job of making the character seems smart, yet evil, but he didn't have that creepy nature I've seen in so many clips of Silence of the Lambs (a film which I have not seen, by the way). At first it was a little weird to see the character pop up in this movie, but as the movie progressed and started mentioning symbols of the "red dragon" I suddenly realized that this must be the original version of the film The Red Dragon. Upon looking up the film after watching this one, that is in fact the case.

Yes, believe it or not, that man is Dr. Hannibal Lecktor

The one last thing I feel the need to point out is how bad the final (only) action scene at the end is. For some reason, whenever someone got shot, you could see the whole picture "jump" in only the way a poor editing job "jumps". Before and after this editing cut is where the blood from the shot suddenly shows up. This doesn't happen just once, but many many times throughout the course of the once scene. It really is very bad.

In the end, while the story was interesting, and the physiological issues the detective is going through all make the movie more interesting, I couldn't help feel a little bored by the extremely dated look of the movie, agonizingly slow pacing, and that terrible terrible action scene. I'd say skip this weird CSI flashback and watch something else.