Flick of The Day: Manhunter

Red Dragon, the Thomas Harris novel released in 1981 was the first to include his brilliantly disturbing creation Dr Hannibal Lecter. After Anthony Hopkins made the role his own with Jonathan Demme's The Silence of the Lambs, there have been various attempts to milk more money from the franchise with more adaptations including  a glossy 2002 adaptation of Red Dragon directed by Brett Ratner. However, a far more nuanced and thrilling approach was taken way back in 1986 when Michael Mann introduced the world to Dr Lecter with today's flick of the day Manhunter.

Manhunter 

The film opens with  a chilling scene, we are introduced to the Tooth Fairy killer Francis Dollarhyde played by the great character actor Tom Noonan as he stalks another family, moving quietly through a house flash light in hand as the camera pans. Soon thereafter we meet Will Graham, played by William Petersen, a brilliant criminal profiler who has recently retired to a life on the beach with his young family after cracking on the job after catching Dr Lecter. Into this idyll steps Will's old FBI colleague Jack Crawford, played by a gruff Dennis Farina, who  pleads with Will to come back and help catch the Tooth Fairy. Before long Will is hot on the trail, using his ability to get inside the mind to track the killer including consulting with imprisoned Hannibal, played with an eerie calm by Brian Cox in a much different characterisation to that of Hopkins 5 years later. Adding to Will's difficulties are a tabloid reporter out for self-aggrandizement and Hannibal's attempts to seek revenge from behind bars.

Manhunter was a critical success but a commercial failure upon its release but its difficult to see why having as it does all the elements of great suspense film-making. Perhaps inevitably compared to Ratner's later Hopkins based adaptation, it is a far superior film. Michael Mann has always been a director with an eye for style and this film exudes it. Each scene makes use of a glorious pallet of colours and together with Mann's editing and framing creates a tension that allows the actors to concentrate on performance. Cox's Lecter revels in his dislike for Will Graham a man he despises simply for having caught him, he doesn't play with Graham in the same manner as Hopkins in Red Dragon. Tom Noonan's Francis Dollarhyde is a chillingly plausible individual, the kind of quiet individual who lives on the margins of society.

The stylization marks this as an 80's film from the beginning and this has served to date the film somewhat but yet gives it a visual cache in much the same manner as other films of the period such as Brian De Palma's Scarface. 

Will Graham: I know that I'm not smarter than you. 

Doctor Hannibal Lecktor: Then how did you catch me? 

Will Graham: You had disadvantages. 

Doctor Hannibal Lecktor: What disadvantages? 

Will Graham: You're insane.

Colour is a very important part of the film with scenes involving Will and his wife making use of a "romantic blue"  while a green hue with elements of purple is used for the more menacing scenes usually involving Dollarhyde while Lecter's scenes are dominated by the white background. Mann also makes use of different frame rates to engage the audience and create tension. The climax of the film alternately flicks between 24, 36, 72 and 90 frames per second.

Given its failure upon release, Manhunter has come to be seen as somewhat of a cult movie which is to do it a disservice. It is the equal of The Silence of the Lambs in terms of style and performance and deserves to be seen as such. While comparisons are invidious and so open to opinion, it is far superior to Brett Ratner's later adaptation and very worthy of a second viewing.

Flick of The Day: 25th Hour

Spike Lee exploded into the world of film in the 1980s with a fine début  in She's Gotta Have It, a comedy drama with an urban reality. However it was his third film, the incendiary Do The Right Thing, dealing as it did with race relations in New York's inner city, that really put Lee on the map as one of the finest, if controversial, film-makers of his generation. As time has passed, he has mellowed but his film-making only gets better, such as today's film, 25th Hour.

25th Hour

Monty Brogan, an excellent as usual Edward Norton, is a drug dealer with 24 hours to put his affairs in order before he heads off to prison for a 7 year stretch. He walks his beloved dog, Doyle, he says goodbye to his father, the superb Brian Cox and he goes out for one last night-out with his oldest friends. Jacob, a teacher played by Philip Seymour Hoffman who is in love with one of his teenage students shuffles through the movie, introverted, shy, but loyal to the end. Slaughtery played by Barry Pepper, a Wall St guy, cynical and arrogant but Monty's oldest friend.

Monty is saying goodbye to his life, his city and as the film moves on goes from grief to anger to acceptance. As the film opens, he is sitting on a bench by the river, thinking of how he got there, tinged with regret. An important aspect of this movie is that it was filmed shortly after 9/11 and Spike Lee devotes a number of important moments to the scars that are left on the City, his City, Monty's City, from the terrorist attack. At one point, we look into the crater left at ground zero. As Monty revisits his old haunts, he looks at the shrines to the dead fire-fighters in his Father's bar. 9/11 is ever present throughout the film.
Monty's anger is obvious, eventually exploding into a vicious rant at the whole city in a public toilet. Everyone is at fault in his eyes, you can feel the characters aimless anger:

"Fuck you and this whole city and everyone in it. Fuck the panhandler's grubbing for money, smiling at me behind my back. Fuck the squeegee men dirtying up the clean windshield of my car. Get a fucking job.  Fuck the Sikhs and the Pakistanis bombing down the avenues in decrepit cabs, curry steaming out their pores, stinking up my day. Terrorists in fucking training. Slow the fuck down!
Fuck the Chelsea Boys with their waxed chests and pumped-up biceps, going down on each other in my parks and on my piers, jiggling their dicks on my Channel!
Fuck the Korean grocers with their pyramids of overpriced fruit and their tulips and roses wrapped in plastic. Ten years in the country, still no speakee English. Fuck the Russians in Brighton Beach. Mobster thugs sitting in cafes, sipping tea in little glasses, sugar cubes between their teeth, wheelin' and dealin' and schemin'. Go back where you fucking came from. Fuck the black-hatted Hasidim strolling up and down the Street in their dirty gabardine with their dandruff, selling South African apartheid diamonds. Fuck the Wall Street brokers. Self-styled masters of the universe. Michael Douglas-Gordon Gekko wannabe motherfuckers figuring out new ways to rob hardworking people blind. Send those Enron assholes to jail for fucking life. You think Bush and Cheney didn't know about that shit? Give me a fucking break. Fuck the Puerto Ricans. Twenty to a car, swelling up the welfare rolls. Worst fucking parade in the city. And don't even get me started on the Dominicans,'cause they make the Puerto Ricans look good. Fuck the Bensonhurst ltalians with their pomaded hair, their nylon warm-up suits, their St. Anthony medallions, swinging their Jason Giambi Louisville Slugger baseball bats trying to audition for "The Sopranos." Fuck the Upper East Side wives with their Hermes scarves and their Balducci artichoke. Overfed faces getting pulled and lifted and stretched all taut
and shiny. You're not fooling anybody, sweetheart. Fuck the Uptown brothers. They never pass the ball, they don't want to play defense, they take five steps on every layup to the hoop, and then they want to turn around and blame everything on the white man. Slavery ended 137 years ago. Move the fuck on. Fuck the corrupt cops with their anus-violating plungers and their 41 shots, standing behind a blue wall of silence. You betray our trust! Fuck the priests who put their hands down some innocent child's pants. Fuck the church that protects them, delivering us into evil.  And while you're at it, fuck J.C. He got off easy -- a day on the cross, a weekend in hell, and all the hallelujahs of the legioned angels for eternity. Try seven years in fucking Otisville, J. Fuck Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, and backward-ass cave-dwelling fundamentalist assholes everywhere. On the names of innocent thousands murdered, I pray you spend the rest of eternity with your 16 whores roasting in a jet-fuel fire in hell. You towel-headed camel jockeys can kiss my royal lrish ass."

Eventually, Monty comes to see that he has nobody but himself to blame but not before each of his friends, and his father blame themselves for not being there to save him from himself. In the end, all that's left is fear. Fear of what awaits him in Prison. Monty goes to his fate and in that is a kind of redemption. He sees the errors he has made and we can have hope for him as he goes off to prison, because of that epiphany.

A very fine film, played out by actors at the top of their game. This is one of the best films of the last 10 years and worthy of your time.