Manhunter

“I am becoming.” Michael Mann has always been fascinated with, perhaps even fixated on, men who sideline all other facilities of their life in order to roam further and further into whatever their obsession in the dark just might be. He’s a filmmaker focused on darkness and loneliness, on the isolation that they bring themselves and the chaos that they surround themselves with in the place of normalcy and stability. Manhunter finds him delving into his darkest and loneliest place yet. There’s a dizzying wave of shadows and blues and synth, with an unwavering sense that the only line that separates the insane is their moral fiber. Mann’s toying around here with familiar ideas that would shape in earlier work like Thief and later on in Heat: a man is only what he allows himself to do or not to do. And eventually that can become a prison. Or, even worse yet, a vacuum that threatens to absorb and devour everything on the outside that they try to uphold for themselves. William Petersen, Brian Cox and Tom Noonan scale along the cat-and-mouse game like it’s a chess board. Graham is unhinged himself, but he’s got a heart and a center. Lecktor and Dolarhyde have neither. That’s the thin line that separates the three men. He willingly brings himself back into the murky world of his old life, chasing after murderous maniacs and surrounding himself with nothing but the monsters in the corner. And he studies them with an almost euphoric intensity that brings out his carnal side. I don’t know if there’s a better nocturnal storyteller than Michael Mann. Every single film with his name under it comes with this sleek, clean, smooth quality while our characters run around after hours. Here, though, Mann deals with true creatures of the night as the moon shines down and leads them on a needling, ticking time bomb collision course.