YMMV / Manhunter

• Awesome Music: Pretty much the entire soundtrack, especially if you grew up in The '80s or are into music from that decade. Specific examples:
  • Iron Butterfly's "In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida". When you absolutely, positively need to blow the sick fuck out of his socks, accept no substitutes.
  • "Graham's Theme" by Michel Rubini serves as both a perfect accompaniment to Will's "Eureka!" Moment and an excellent tribute to the complexity of the human mind.
  • "Strong As I Am" by The Prime Movers was personally selected for the film by Michael Mann himself, because it was just that awesome.
  • "Heartbeat" by Red 7, the song that plays over the end credits, is a powerful new wave number whose usage in the film signifies that Will's psychological troubles are finally over and that he can now retire in peace.
  • "Coelacanth", "Evaporation", and "The Big Hush" by Shriekback are all fine pieces of mood music, and make the film's tensest moments all the more nerve-wracking.
• Broken Base:
  • Brian Cox's portrayal of Lecktor is weird to see for someone who has seen Anthony Hopkins' Lecter first, but while Hopkins has an Oscar to back his version, more and more people are starting to let Cox's Lecktor in from the cold as Manhunter achieves cult status.
  • Manhunter (1986) vs Red Dragon (2002); which is better? While critical consensus leans sharply in favor of Manhunter (featuring a 92% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes compared to Red Dragon's 68%), the audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes and viewer ratings on IMDB for both films are essentially equal, so it's definitely a case where it's a matter of opinion varying from person to person. Manhunter is perhaps a more straightforward moral story with none of the ambiguity that other entries in the series have.
• Complete Monster: Dr. Hannibal Lecktor lacks most of his incarnations' standards or genuine politeness. A Serial Killer who brutally slew nine college girls and left two survivors permanently hospitalized, Lecktor attacked and nearly murdered FBI profiler Will Graham for exposing his crimes. Confined to his cell but no less horrid in how he psychologically torments Will and fondly recalls how the first cop who entered Lecktor's basement was scarred for life by the horrors inside, Lecktor reacts to Will questioning him for information on the new killer "the Tooth Fairy" by finding Will's home address and leaking it to the Tooth Fairy, urging the murderer to kill Will's wife and child. His crimes committed out of nothing but sadism and, later, spite towards Will, Lecktor held a belief that his murders made himself like God, and celebrated every death he caused.
• Covered Up:
  • This film, and specifically Brian Cox's take on the Hannibal "Lecktor" character, has been covered up by the later Thomas Harris adaptations and Anthony Hopkins' portrayal of Hannibal "Lecter".
  • The film adaptation of Red Dragon is also this more specifically because of the renaming of the novel to Manhunter.
• Cult Classic: While both Fanon Discontinuity and Discontinuity Nod probably means that Red Dragon gets the stronger focus—especially with Anthony Hopkins back as Lecter in that one, this movie despite its poor financial performance at the time—whether or not critical praise was otherwise better—got more focus and attention by fans eventually when the incredible success of The Silence of the Lambs helped boost it by association—and that attention still remains devoted by the fanbase at least.
• Funny Moments:
  • Falling asleep on an airplane with a folder full of gruesome crime scene photos on your tray? Bad idea.
  • After Will shuts him down, the way Lectkor pauses, looking at him, before asking him if he "dreams" much takes the very first time Hannibal Lecter ever did something like that and makes it the funniest moment in the movie.
  • As creepy as his phone call to Will later on is, it's also kind of amusing to see just how little a shit Hannibal gives about the horrible things he's saying. His body language and tone of voice are so inappropriately casual that it's both disturbing and funny at the same time.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Gil Grissom confronting Hannibal Lector. The episode "Abra Cadaver" would have Petersen and Tom Noonan (Dolarhyde) facing off again.
  • Brian Cox would later have another major role as a villain in a similarly named video game.
• Just Here for Godzilla: Quite a number of viewers from the 90's onward went into the film specifically because of the presence of Hannibal "Lecktor" and the fact that this is an adaptation of the book that The Silence of the Lambs is a loose sequel to. In fact, the success of the 1991 film adaptation of Lambs led the Manhunter rightsholders to exploit this trope as a means of re-marketing this film to a newer audience, years after its initial critical and commercial failure in 1986; given that Manhunter has quite thoroughly been Vindicated by History, one can confidently say that the ploy worked.
• Nightmare Retardant: The revelation of what Hannibal's secret code to Dolarhyde is in the letter he sends happens shortly after the letter is published in the original book and 2002 film, and it's a very frightening moment. In Manhunter, it happens directly after the scariest scene in the movie, and in a ridiculously casual way (it's practically "Oh by the way, Will, Lecktor gave away your home address.") It's likely that the re-positioning of the scene was to evoke a From Bad to Worse sensation. For some viewers (especially on rewatch), part of the problem is the knowledge that in this version Dolarhyde never gets the chance to use the information, making the subplot rather a waste of time and a Negated Moment of Awesome for Lecktor. However, it does result in a supremely tense Bait-and-Switch scene in which it seems like Dolarhyde is stalking Peterson's wife and son outside their beach house. (It's the cops.)
• One-Scene Wonder: Lecktor appears in only three scenes totaling to around 8 minutes of screentime (in a two-hour movie), but he casts a pall over the entire film. Compared to Anthony Hopkins' more iconic serpentine portrayal of Lecter, Cox's Lecktor is a much more smug, slimy character, with cold, black eyes, an almost toothless mouth, and a constant awareness and enjoyment of the fact that, even behind bars, he's always the one in control. As Screenhub put it, "if Hopkins was a snake, Cox was a jackal."
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • It's hard to watch Dennis Farina as Jack Crawford here and not immediately think of Unsolved Mysteries.
  • Frankie Faison plays Lieutenant Fisk, and it wouldn't be the last time he'd star in an adaptation of a story featuring Hannibal Lecter. ^note He played Barney, the nurse guarding Hannibal's cell.
  • Joan Allen plays Reba, Dollarhyde's blind coworker-to-girlfriend to almost-victim.
• Song Association: Similarly to what The Silence of the Lambs did for "Goodbye Horses" and Q Lazzarus, "Strong as I Am" and the Prime Movers as a whole are associated almost exclusively with this film, thanks to it being both used in the movie and featured prominently in its theatrical trailer.
• Spiritual Adaptation: Like To Live and Die in L.A., this feels like a Miami Vice film, from the visual style to the music to the tone. It helps that Michael Mann directed.
• Suspiciously Similar Song: "Graham's Theme" sounds a lot like the instrumental of Pink Floyd's "Comfortably Numb".
• Vindicated by History: Didn't do very well at the box office and dealt with mixed reviews from critics upon initial release, now it's considered a classic in it's own right, left quite an impact on films and TV shows of the same or similar genres, and is generally regarded the best film adaptation of the Hannibal Lecter novels aside from The Silence of the Lambs.

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