Review of Manhunter (1986) by Gordon B — 31 May 2015

Manhunter isn't the typical viewing of a teenaged girl, far from it, but Manhunter is a film that I grew up watching many a late saturday night - but it isn't a film that I truly appreciated until I became more mature and begun really studying films and their conventions.

The first in the Lector series - this film is completely overlooked; it's main criticism after it's release was the stylistic choices Mann applied to the film, 'over-stylised' in other words, personally I love the style of the film; the symbolic use of colour, innovative shots and well thought out mise-en-scene give the film it's charm, a demonstration of 1980's chic.

Manhunter is undoubtably a slow burner - for the most part of the film we are following the story of Will Graham, played by William Petersen who brings a wonderful fragility to Graham's character; a man who must adopt the mind of a killer in order to understand his motives and prevent the murder of other innocents.

To peer further into the films consciousness, Manhunter is essentially a film about the dangers of technology combined with the male gaze; to put it bluntly, it's a film about looking. Mann has explored the use of visual technologies and it's relationship to both Graham and Francis Dollarhyde; but also the audience, after all, film in itself is voyeuristic and it is through voyeurism that both Dollarhyde and Graham can function to get them to where they want to be.

Tom Noonan is brilliant casting for Dollarhyde; tall, mysterious and strangly gentle, he brings a menacing yet pathetic quality to Dollarhyde - Mann has a knack for encouraging sympathy from the spectator.

Over all, Manhunter is tense and unsettling, engaging the spectator in ways beyond their awareness, it is a film that will pull you into Graham's mental prison, inside an uncertain state of mind. A psychological thriller at it's best.