Michael Mann is Zalman King in disguise. These fellows are right: MANHUNTER is dull and lacks Anthony Hopkins' charisma, which is 50% of the reason for the success of Silence of the Lambs. I'd prefer RED DRAGON. Or neither of them.

Exactly what he said, right down to the ones I already own.

Not to sidetrack this thread too much, but give me a break. Manhunter is a movie made by a talented filmmaker who cared about what he was doing. Red Dragon is a pathetic franchise cash-in made by the worst sort of Hollywood hack.

To be honest, Anthony Hopkins is only good in the Lecter role in Silence of the Lambs. The giddy lunatic he plays in the following two movies may share the same character name but is not the same person at all. Watch Silence and Hannibal back-to-back and you'll see that there's basically no resemblance whatsoever in his performance. He isn't even trying. Hopkins even admitted as much in interviews when asked what sort of preparation he did to get back into the Lecter mindset. His answer, "None". It shows.

And Brian Cox is terrific as Lecter. He's actually menacing, not a cartoon exaggeration of a psychopath.

Sorry, gotta disagree you as well Josh Z. Red Dragon is by far superior to Manhunter in every way.

I already own the MGM release and the Criterion. I will gladly buy this new release. This is a great movie and I've loved it ever since I first saw it in theaters.

Your forum name agrees with your statement.

Check davisdvd.com....
" Newly Remastered anamorphic transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 track....
Recycled bonus materials from the previous edition...
New to this edition are the silence of the lambs page to screen two part documentary(a wealth of talent, preparation and authenticity), a new three part documentary with director Demme and star Foster ( the beginning, making silence of the lambs, breaking the silence) and a scoring the silence featurette. this set is topped of with a four page booklet and exclusive Hannibal Lecter recipe cards"

I don't think I will double dip...The trasfer on the 2001 edition is great in my eyes, and this movie doesn't need a better bass track, it's not a concert...
But every completist will disagree.

I'll be triple-dipping. Thanks for the info.

I'll stick with the R2 Japan Manhunter DVD. It's got a pretty decent transfer, plus I have the other 2 Anchor Bay releases with all the extras(as well as the laserdisc version). 5 copies of Manhunter would be a little excessive.

That being said, if MGM releases this on Blu-ray, it's gonna be really hard not getting a player.

Fixed.

I'll probably pick it up since this is one of the two disks I own that I accidentally bought the fullscreen verion of. :p

Still need to track down the CC version though, for the commmentaries.

Anthony Hopkins was the only good thing about Red Dragon. Manhunter is a great movie. The shootout scene with Graham crashing through the glass door and Dolarhyde bursting through the painting is one of my all time favorites.

Considering MANHUNTER pisses all over the original novel (while RED DRAGON actually adheres to it) automatically puts it in the loser position. I'll grant that William Petersen was better than Edward Norton, but otherwise, every other aspect of MANHUNTER (yes, including the aesthetic of its direction and the vanilla performance of Brian Cox compared to Hopking chocolate chip cookie dough one) fails to match RED DRAGON.

i bet MGM will fuck the Boxset release up and include HANNIBAL single disc version.

Seconded. Red Dragon wasn't bad, but it was nowhere as good as Manhunter

Ah, The Shining argument!

Another RED DRAGON over Manunter fan here and damn proud it.

man...i love Red Dragon i just cringe everytime i remember that THE RAT made it.

Will take my time to triple-dip on this for sure, but this release looks good enough so far to justify it.

I don't think Michael Mann is a hack but "Manhunter" is a total phone-in job across the board.

He obviously crapped it out during the "Miami Vice" hiatus and future circumstances forced a bunch of undeserved faux-credibility upon it.

It's a typical mid-80's Dino De Laurentiis b-movie. To put it in perspective, the same year De Laurentiis also produced "King Kong Lives" and "Maximum Overdrive".

Anyone who has this incredulous "I can't believe you prefer 'Red Dragon'" attitude is nothing more than a pretentious poser who is uncapable of actually judging the two films on their own merits.

What about those of us that just prefer Manhunter to Red Dragon? I want to be a poser too!

I kind of like 'em both but I prefer Manhunter. I'll give you that Manhunter is dated and has a craptacular title but when I saw it in the theatre in the 80's Iwas impressed. It may appear less impressive to people seeing it today because shows like CSI and other films and shows that depict forensics are so commonplace now. Back before Cold Case Detectives, Manhunter had an impressive realism. At the time, the music was cool as hell too.
What I like most about Red Dragon was the ending and how it stayed closer to the book. Manhunter also never really explains the significance of the dentures or Dollarhyde's history. Mann only hints that Dollarhyde was abused.

I prefer the Petersen, Noonan, Cox cast.

Hopkin's performance in Red Dragon was flat out horrible. In Silence, he had that combination of refined gentleman and caged psycho that made the role so memorable. By the time Dragon rolled around, his acting had lapsed into lots of exaggerated mannerisms and an air of campiness. A stronger director would have told him to rein it in, but Ratner didn't, and the movie suffered for it big time. Actually, given that the rest of the cast gives performances that range from bland to autopilot to hilariously bad, I wonder if Ratner worked with the actors at all. Just a horrible movie overall...and Ratner didn't exactly endear himself to me when he gave an interview to "Entertainment Weekly" and said he was doing Dragon because he thought Manhunter was horrible, and wanted to improve it (Mann's response to this wasn't a happy one).

Sorry for the digression there. Back on topic: I only own the Criterion release of Silence, so I'm definitely looking forward to this. But wasn't there some argument over the colors between the Criterion and first MGM SE? Some people thought the Criterion looked more accurate, and the MGM was too bright. Was there ever a straight answer given?

To each his own I suppose. Out of the 4 movies, Lambs, Hannibal, Manhunter & Red Dragon. Manhunter was the only one that truly scared me. Lambs is excellent as well.