Manhunter (15)

Michael Mann’s under-appreciated cult gem returns with a director’s cut, wrapped in a glossy new restoration.

Always in the shadow of The Silence of the Lambs, the first stab at adapting Thomas Harris’ Hannibal Lecter novels (this one based on Red Dragon), is nevertheless not one to be overlooked. Unlike Lambs, Manhunter is an exercise in subtlety and nuance. Brian Cox predates Anthony Hopkins' flamboyance with a cold, quietly sinister confidence as Lecter. However, the serial killer he's enlisted to help track down The Tooth Fairy (Tom Noonan) represents the psychological opposite of Lambs' Buffalo Bill — calm, ordered, and (chillingly) a more fully functioning member of society.

The third element is FBI profiler Will Graham (William Peterson), he is probably the most flawed of all three. He has an intensity bordering on the psychotic and represents the theme of a hunter needing to achieve empathy for his quarry (which Mann would re-explore again in Heat). Serial killers in media are ten a penny nowadays and, with the exception of Netflix’s Mindhunter, are rarely very good. So come and dive into the sordid world of where it all began.