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Biography

Manhunter is a 1986 American neo-noir psychological thriller film written and directed by Michael Mann and based on the 1981 novel Red Dragon by Thomas Harris; it stars William Petersen as FBI profiler Will Graham. Also featured are Tom Noonan as serial killer Francis Dollarhyde, Dennis Farina as Graham's FBI superior Jack Crawford, and Brian Cox as incarcerated killer Hannibal Lecter. The film focuses on Graham coming out of retirement to lend his talents to an investigation on Dollarhyde, a killer known as the Tooth Fairy. In doing so, he must confront the demons of his past and meet with Lecter, who nearly counted Graham among his victims. Manhunter focuses on the forensic work carried out by the FBI to track down killers and shows the long-term effects that cases like this have on profilers such as Graham, highlighting the similarities between him and his quarry. The film features heavily stylized use of color to convey this sense of duality, and the nature of the characters' similarity has been explored in academic readings of the film. It was the first film adaptation of Harris' Hannibal Lecter novels, as well as the first adaptation of Red Dragon, which later became the basis for a film of the same name in 2002.