Miles watches Manhunter for the first time.

Michael Mann’s Manhunter (1986) brought Thomas Harris’s Hannibal Lecter universe to the screen years before The Silence of the Lambs became a cultural phenomenon, and did it with neon light, synths, forensic procedure, and an overwhelming sense of loneliness. John and Miles revisit Mann’s cult classic to discuss William Petersen’s haunted Will Graham, Tom Noonan’s terrifying and unexpectedly vulnerable Francis Dollarhyde, Brian Cox’s remarkably understated Hannibal Lecktor, and a film in which empathy becomes both a detective’s greatest weapon and a dangerous form of self-erasure. Plus: home movies, immaculate architecture, the tiger scene, “In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida,” and the question of whether Manhunter might be the purest Michael Mann movie of them all.