Manhunter, Red Dragon, and what makes a movie good?

Feuds are nothing new among dedicated fans of anything. You'll hear arguments among comics fans about which was the best Batman that are no different from sports fans arguing about which lineup of a team was the best. Movies are no exception, and the "which is better" discussion comes up a lot when the same story is told by wildly different creative teams. Take for example the two movies above, Manhunter & Red Dragon. Both are adaptations of Thomas Harris' first Hannibal Lecter novel Red Dragon, a prequel to Silence of the Lambs about FBI profiler Will Graham coming out of retirement and working with the infamous cannibal to catch a brutal serial killer called the Tooth Fairy.

Having watched both for myself recently, the "which is better" question came to my mind. Initially I felt Red Dragon was the better movie, but that Manhunter was the better-made movie. That conclusion got me wondering though, if Manhunter was made better why did I think that Red Dragon was the superior film? After all, if Manhunter was better made shouldn't it also just be better? So I rolled the question and the two films around in my head for some time and came to what I thought was an interesting conclusion. Which movie was better depended on my own personal criteria for what made a good movie.


Let me explain. Both Manhunter & Red Dragon were good movies, neither was clearly worse than the other, and they both told the same story with most of the same plot points. They could only be judged on aesthetics; things like music, editing, mis-en-scene, etc. And the two were so different in this regard that deciding which was the better movie was going to come down to my own, or anyone else who watched them's, personal taste. Whichever film hewed closer to the idea of "good movie".

With that in mind, why did I think Red Dragon was the better film at first? Well, part of it was probably the reason Red Dragon was made. See Red Dragon was made in 2002, 11 years after Silence of the Lambs, and was the last film to feature Anthony Hopkins in his iconic role as Hannibal Lecter. That was enough of a draw, but that it was also just a decent serial killer detective story in its own right was appealing. And the film delivered pretty much what I expected. It gave me plenty of Hopkins, an intriguing mystery, and a creepy bad guy performance from Ralph Fiennes. Overall, very satisfying if not as artistic as Silence had been.

Brian Cox as Hannibal Lecter in Manhunter.

Manhunter, in contrast, was made in 1986 before Hannibal Lecter was a household name. It focused more on Graham, the man who caught Lecter, and the psychological tole that getting into the heads of psychopaths was having on him. What drew me to it, besides just to make the comparison, was its appearance on a list of 100 Scariest movies and the fact that it was an early work by Michael Mann, whom I've talked about before. And where Red Dragon gave a very broad view of the story's events following Lecter, Graham, and the Tooth Fairy, Manhunter was more streamlined, intimate, and darker. Mann also used the material as a jumping off point for his own artistic style; employing beautiful shot compositions, atmospheric neon chiaroscuro lighting, and an oppressive and creepy synthesizer score. One thing didn't have a lot of? Hannibal Lecter. Oh he's in there, and not played by Hopkins which was interesting to see, but he's more of a sidenote like he was in the novel. An intellectual foil to Graham more than anything. But that didn't stop Manhunter from being the more visually dynamic of the two films.

But again, if Manhunter was better made as a film why did I feel Red Dragon was the better film? I think it has something to do with Film Crit Hulk calls tangible surface details. To grossly oversimplify the work of a genius (seriously, Film Crit Hulk is one of the smartest people writing about film today), tangible surface details are the elements of a film most obvious to the casual viewer, the things we the audience have been taught to understand and expect to fit the popular notion of "good movie". These are things like dramatic emotional speeches from actors or cool camera tricks, things where if a film has them and does them well enough we call it a good film because we expect good movies to have those things. To give you a concrete example from one of the films I'm discussing, Red Dragon gives Anthony Hopkins' Lecter plenty of screentime despite him only playing a minimal role in the novel the film is based on. Looking at this from the POV of our hypothetical casual viewer, and myself to a certain degree, this makes sense. After all, this is an iconic character that Hopkins won an Oscar portraying so of course the filmmakers are going to give him plenty of focus and attention. And Hopkins does play the part very entertainingly, so we the audience don't even consider this unless we've read the novel. We expected to get plenty of Lecter and because we did, we feel satisfied that our expectations have been met.

Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in Red Dragon.

So did I think Red Dragon was the better movie only because its tangible surface details fell more in line with what I expected out of it? Possibly. Does that mean I was tricked into thinking it was better for the same reason? Not necessarily. Again, it really comes down to whichever film each potential viewer's personal criteria for quality. Is Manhunter the superior film for being a more singular, artistically inventive vision of a familiar story, or is Red Dragon superior for delivering a solid if more conventional serial killer hunt story?  Is Red Dragon lesser for not taking more risks with material and meeting audience expectations, or is Manhunter lesser for blazing its own trail and doing something different? It all depends on who's watching them.

For my part, I still feel Red Dragon is better for its accesibility. It's the version I would recommend to someone coming into this story cold because it has the extra Lecter screentime and gives a broader view of the story's events. It would also make a follow-up viewing of Manhunter more interesting as the contrast between the two makes for enjoyable viewing. But if this exercise has taught me anything, it's to keep in mind my own preconceptions about what makes a movie "good". Am I responding positively because it's actually a quality film, or am I just picking up on the tangible surface details that I've been taught to expect from a "good movie"? Asking why I'm responding to a film the way I am is at the root of film criticism, and it's something I hope you consider the next time you go to the movies.