Manhunter is an American feature film of the crime drama and thriller genres. It is based on the 1981 novel Red Dragon by author Thomas Harris. It was written and directed by Michael Mann. It was produced by the De Laurentiis Entertainment Group and was released theatrically in the United States on August 15th, 1986. The story follows Will Graham - a semi-retired federal agent with a unique skill for profiling serial killers. FBI administrator Jack Crawford coaxes Graham back into the field to assist with catching a family annihilator that the media has dubbed "The Tooth Fairy". To help him profile this particularly gruesome killer, Graham is forced to seek aide from the last man he arrested - the psychopathic cannibal Hannibal Lecktor. Manhunter stars William Peterson as special agent Will Graham with Tom Noonan as Francis Dolarhyde, Brian Cox as Doctor Hannibal Lecktor and Dennis Farina as Jack Crawford.
Actor Frankie Faison, who plays Lieutenant Fisk in this film will return to the franchise as another character; Barney Matthews - an orderly at the Baltimore State Hospital for the Criminally Insane as seen in The Silence of the Lambs and the Hannibal TV series.
This film spells the main killer's name as Francis Dollarhyde. In the novel, the Red Dragon feature film and the Hannibal television series his name is spelled as "Dolarhyde".
The credits on this film spell Hannibal Lecter's surname as "Lecktor".
On the Internet Movie Database, Manhunter has a Starmeter rating of 7.2 out of 10 based on more than 81,000 user votes. In the United States, the unweighted mean is 7.3 with 30.8% of the total voting pool ranking the film 7 out of 10. 8.7% of voters gave the film a perfect score of 10, and 0.9% of the voters, totaling 735, gave the film a score of 1.
On the movie review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, Manhunter retains a Tomatometer rating of 94% based on 49 approved critic reviews. It has 46 positive reviews and 3 negative reviews. The film has an audience score of 77% based on more than 50,000 verified user ratings, averaging 3.8 out of 5.
On Metacritic, Manhunter has a Metascore of 75 out of 100 based on 22 critic reviews, indicating generally favorable reviews. It has a user score of 7.7 out of 10. The film has 18 positive reviews, 2 negative reviews, and 2 mixed reviews.
On Letterboxd, the film has a weighted average of 3.85 based on 91,488 user votes.
This movie was released theatrically on the same day as David Cronenberg's remake of The Fly.
