This may be the most anti-fascist Hollywood blockbuster ever made (and that includes movies where the bad guys are literal Nazis).
Yeah, it’s got a bit of that 90s Bruckheimer bloat, and the Deus Ex Gabagool conclusion feels a little too easy and silly. But man I love this movie. Its vision of techno-authoritarianism - where public interest lawyers and civil servants are pitted against amoral careerists and sneering computer dweebs - is startlingly on-the-nose for our current moment. And…
In a career full of dark, sophisticated meditations on manhood, this might be Michael Mann’s most complex and rewarding. The men in Manhunter (Lector, Dollarhyde, and Graham) are violent, obsessive control-freaks - classic guy stuff. But in Graham, Mann identifies a host of other traits that SHOULD define masculinity in our culture - vulnerability, fatherhood, partnership, making love on the beach to 80s prog rock.
While it’s become cliche for serial killer movies to plumb the “we’re-not-so-different-you-and-I”-ness of the profiler/killer dynamic, Manhunter’s greatness lies in exploring where these two archetypes diverge.
Wanna get your adrenaline pumping? Who needs young bald steroid-men hanging from helicopters in the jungle when you can watch 93-year-old June Squibb slowly traverse a cluttered antique showroom in Van Nuys?
Thelma somehow works because, despite its silly premise of a nonagenarian vigilante channeling the fake-cop revenge mania of Charles Bronson, the movie honors and takes seriously the reality that this woman is 93. If she loses her balance and falls on the grass, she’s basically done for, and…
First, a nonexhaustive list of the random cool people involved with this movie: David Byrne, John Waters, Laurie Anderson, John Cale, The Feelies, John Sayles, Steve Scales, and probably countless more I’m not hip enough to recognize.
The less you know going into this the better. Suffice it to say that the film does so much across so many genres - yet its maximalist approach toward storytelling is counterbalanced by delicate character studies and nuanced observations of human behavior.
And…
