Manhunter (1986) - Newspaper Ad [Oakland Tribune]

August 10, 1986

Thief had made me something of a Michael Mann fan, although the artistic and narrative choices he made adapting F. Paul Wilson's The Keep both baffled and frustrated me. The same applies for this adaptation of the bestselling thriller Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.

While there were definitely things I liked and admired about the film. I thought it fell short of capturing the darker and more harrowing aspects of its source material. In 1986, when I watched the film on home video, I thought it seemed to be a failure on Mann's part. Nowadays, however, I think it has more to do with how certain aspects of the story that most resonated with me could not be translated from the page to the screen and retain what had made them so powerful when I experienced them as a reader.

Learning to let go of that perceptual intimacy from when I read a story and to appreciate a filmmaker's unique interpretation of said work would take me a few decades to accept and even embrace.