Manhunter | Full Movie | Movies Anywhere

Manhunter most assuredly isn't a movie for every taste. But if you like your thrillers served ice-cold with a twist of glitz, you'll find this is a very potent brew.

It's only later, safely out of its grasp, that you begin to notice that for all its perverse fascination, and save for two superlative performances, Manhunter has delivered very little.

Petersen is no sinister Chuck Bronson or Sylvester Stallone. He's a very soft-spoken, almost misty-eyed actor with choirboy looks. When he's racked with the sordid thought of the killer, the effect is all the more potent.

The most disturbing and honest thriller of the '80s, Manhunter is also distinguished by a highly evocative score and by some super-fine acting from Joan Allen and Tom Noonan.

How do you put the mind of a murderer into a movie? Writer-director Michael Mann's irritatingly fashionable and self-consciously estheticized version of Red Dragon, entitled Manhunter, is no help.