If you’re a movie buff, a cinephile, or whatever else you want to call it (I called my 2016 memoir “Movie Freak”), one of the greatest pleasures to be had is when a film grabs hold of you and won’t let go. That’s happened to me a number of times, with movies like “Nashville” and “Carrie” and “Mean Streets” and “Sid and Nancy” and “Full Metal Jacket” and “Natural Born Killers” and “Boogie Nights.” I’ve been possessed by those films, driven to see them each of them over and over and over again, as if they were albums I was playing. (You can’t play an album too many times; same for a movie you love.) One of the supreme instances of that, for me, is Michael Mann’s “Manhunter.”
It’s a thriller I got addicted to, for a number of reasons. I couldn’t get enough of its look and atmosphere, its fascination and terror, its extraordinary villain, its moody Sherlock-Holmes-as-forensic-underground-man FBI hero, its music-drenched vibe of saturnine lyricism. It’s my favorite thriller of all time. There are days when I’ve thought it’s the greatest thriller ever made.
But then, I lost objectivity about “Manhunter” a long time ago. It’s a movie I never get tired of seeing because it speaks to me. So I wanted to say something about it on the occasion of its 40th anniversary, which is being commemorated by the small theatrical release (on July 24) of “Manhunter: The Final Cut,” a 4K restoration and director’s cut overseen by Michael Mann.
