Like Miami Vice , only longer
A note before we begin: yeah, yeah, I know William Petersen was the guy in Manhunter before he was the guy in CSI, but this is the CSI portion of Mighty Big TV, so I really don't care that William Petersen's playing someone named Will Graham: Gil he is now, and so Gil he shall be throughout the recap. If you don't like it, mentally substitute "Will" for "Gil"; it's all homonymic anyway.
And now, on with the recap.
The movie opens with the insistent buzz of Jan Hammer's finest, i.e. the ability to hold two fingers on a synthesizer keyboard for five minutes straight. As the chord -- which would be ominous if it didn't sound so cheesy -- continues its pernicious thrum, a flashlight beams across the staircase of a family home. The light is cool and blue and oh-so-eighties. It focuses on a man and a woman asleep in bed -- dear God, but the synthesizer has robbed me of the ability to think straight -- and then the woman finally sits up.
Cue the glowing green title: Manhunter. At least we didn't open with a shot of Las Vegas.
Meanwhile, Lieutenant Castillo and Crockett are perched on a piece of driftwood, talking about -- oh. My bad. That's Dennis Farina as Jack Crawford, and our boy Gil, sporting a savage tan, truly eye-popping purple short-shorts, and a cutoff sweatshirt. And -- because this is a Michael Mann production set in the 1980s, and as we all know, Michael Mann went on to make Miami Vice, like, immediately after wrapping this movie -- Gil is also wearing stubble. I'm guessing he was the trial run for the feasibility of that unshaven look. Anyway, the two are having a conversation where Crawford is obviously trying to persuade Gil to do something, and Gil's all moodily saying, "I'm not falling all over myself to talk about it much anywhere, Jack." Suffice it to say that no, I do not know what "it" is yet. Oh, wait -- Crawford's filling in the Brass role. There must be something in the job description for middle-management types in law enforcement: "Will provide expository dialogue." Anyway, Crawford says, "The first one in Birmingham was in the newspapers a month ago. The second one in Atlanta was all over TV." Gil has no response for that. Crawford says angrily, "You ever think about giving me a call?" "No," Gil sulks. "Why not?" Crawford continues, with no small hint of asperity in his voice. "I quit, remember?" Gil snits.
We then go to a truly bizarre camera shot -- Jack Crawford, as framed by Gil's bicep. Then we draw back; Gil lights a cigarette as Jack puts two photos, face down, on the driftwood, daring Gil, "If you can't look anymore, I understand." Well, I understand that he's baiting Gil to come back; judging by the look on Gil's face -- persecuted -- he understands too. "Don't try to run a game down on me, Jack," he says. Jack has the good grace to look ashamed, then says, "If I really didn't need you to come back, I wouldn't ask. This guy's on a lunar cycle. I have three weeks and a few days until the full moon." And now we have the built-in dramatic tension for the rest of the movie. Will Gil catch this guy in time? Like I have to ask. "We have a better chance to get him fast if you help," Jack continues, and because we're all of three minutes into the movie and we still have many more to go, it's a safe bet that Gil's going to turn over those photos, then decide to help. The synthesizer kicks in again -- I suspect it's part of an experiment to condition us to react with dread every time we hear a Moog -- and Gil's all, "I'll think about it." Just then, a tall blonde and a blond kid come walking by the log; the woman's sporting a pair of big plastic earrings and an all-white outfit. Ah, eighties fashion! Between this and the occasional thirtysomething rerun, I'm almost nostalgic for power-perms and the puffy belted-shirt thing. Almost. Anyway, the blonde -- who's also wearing Ray-Bans, as was apparently legally mandated for all occupants of Earth in the 1980s -- gives Jack a tight grin. Ah, so she's Mrs. Gil, and none too eager to see Gil returning to work.
: a heartwarming scene of domesticity. Gil and the blond kid are erecting a fence around a turtle nest to ensure the hatchlings' safety. Perhaps this is the result of watching a year's worth of Gil Grissom, the man who wrote the book on moody loner behavior, but the whole father-and-son thing here just seems wrong. While the two of them are carrying on about turtles, the blonde, Molly, is giving Jack a piece of her mind, saying, "You're supposed to be his friend, Jack. Why'd you call him?" Jack sidesteps the question, saying, "If he decides to do it, Molly, I'll keep him as far away from it as I can." Having concluded that non-conversation, the two of them brood into a picturesque sunset as the synthesizer throbs. I suppose this is the point where we infer that Gil's feeling all torn up inside due to conflicting personal and professional demands.
Cut to another blue-lit night: it's an all-white bedroom, where a shirtless Gil and a not-very-dressed Molly are lying on their stomachs in an all-white bed, illuminated by the moon shining on the ocean behind them. Jesus, didn't people close their blinds in the eighties? "We've got it good, don't we?" he says, and she mumbles, "We've got it more than good. All that happened to you before lets you know that." Well, that was spectacularly uninformative. Thanks, Molly! Gil continues, "If I went back, I wouldn't look at evidence. I wouldn't be deeply involved. He wouldn't even see me or know my name." I laugh, knowing that Gil's just guaranteed that he'll be wading through gruesome exhibits and coming face-to-face with the killer. Molly's not buying it either. She and Gil dicker over whether or not he should go. They decide the thing to do is to send him off into harm's way, then celebrate their decision-making prowess by engaging in one of the most clumsily-composed love scenes in the history of Western cinema. It's one thing to have to roll around in a weirdly blue-lit room, but to do so to one-note synthesizer "music" amidst a tangle of big, permed 1980s hair and indistinguishable body parts is well-nigh unwatchable. Gil then works his way down Molly's neck; she lies back and, going by the look on her face, proceeds to think of England.
And now, on to the chapter entitled, "Scene of the slaughter." After establishing with some local yokel that he will be spending the rest of his evening wandering about a murder scene, then viewing home movies of the deceased in his motel room, Gil exits the car and walks over to the house, accompanied by the mildest of synthesizer chords. He walks into the dark house with his inimitable pigeon-toed stride, going through the kitchen and winding his way up the stairs. This is all so reminiscent of the "Buffalo Gals" episode, I half-expect Marg Helgenberger to pop out and make a snippy comment about the evidence. Gil continues to walk through the house, using only a flashlight to guide his way, and just as I irritably wonder why these crack investigators insist on working in the dark, he opens a bedroom door and flips on the lights. We establish two things: one, that Dante Spinotti never met a white interior he didn't love; and two, that this killer emptied about a gallon of blood all over said white interior. It's gruesome. Gil looks wary. He also looks overdressed -- skinny tie, supersaturated colors. He then whips out a handheld tape recorder and begins speaking: "The killer entered through a sliding glass door. He used a glass cutter anchored to a suction cup. His entry was skillful." I immediately scream and cover my ears. I hate the passive voice with the burning energy of a thousand fiery suns. The action -- entering a building -- is dynamic. Don't make it the passive subject! He entered skillfully! He demonstrated skill when entering! Not "the entry was skillful." Yargh. Now I'm so peeved, I'm just going to forgo transcribing the rest of Gil reading a FBI report into the tape recorder; it's a ritualistic syntactic slaughter.
Gil's taking pills and drinking out of the bathroom faucet when the phone rings. He freezes -- and who can blame him? -- and listens to the machine pick it up. We learn that the deceased family's surname was Leeds. The quick cut is of Gil watching the Leeds home movies on mute, still reading the FBI report into his little tape recorder and musing over the timeline of events. We then go to another weird cut: Gil's over in the right-hand corner of the screen, boxed in by the back of the TV. He eventually clicks everything off and hunkers on over to the phone, where he calls Molly. Judging by her appearance, she hasn't moved from the bed since last we saw her. They exchange I-love-yous, and she hangs up; he hunches over on the bed. Awww, poor Gil. Molly collapses back into the weirdly-lit blue bedroom, since talking on the phone while lying down evidently took a lot out of her. The camera cuts back to that weird TV-and-Gil right-skewed composition, and Gil puts the videotape back in. He settles back down to watch it, looking considerably more strung-out than he did a few minutes ago. "What are you dreaming? That's something you can't afford for me to know about, isn't it? God, she's lovely, isn't she? It was maddening to have to touch her with rubber gloves on, wasn't it?" he asks the television rhetorically. Ah, see -- this is where we see why Gil's the real deal: he's getting in the killer's head so he can anticipate the moves. As Gil talks, his voice rises steadily and he looks slightly more deranged. He continues, "They found talcum powder on her leg. But there wasn't any talcum powder in the bathroom. The talcum powder came out of a rubber glove as you pulled it off to touch her. You took off your gloves to touch her, didn't you?" And now, Gil commences shouting: "Didn't you, you son of a bitch! You touched her with your bare hands! And then you put the gloves back on! Did you open all their eyes so they could see you!?" Gil, please stop. I'm embarrassed for you. Happily, he heeds my plea and shuts up, electing instead to call Jack and have him send down the FBI's print guy so he can dust the corneas of the Leeds' eyes.
Cut to Gil handling the Atlanta police, snippily reminding them that they didn't dust the eyeballs. The conversation turns into a police briefing; Gil discreetly sits in the back while the local sheriff gives his people their to-do list. One colorless little man gets up and shows a model of the killer's teeth. As much as I appreciate the forensic geekery, I have to express my skepticism at being able to apprehend someone based on their incisors. The science show over, Gil gets put on the spot to give a thumbnail sketch of the victim. Thankfully, when he brings up the entry detail again, he does so in the correct tense. He goes on to profile the guy: "He's an organized individual, who lives life competently with little or no leakage." Is it wrong to snicker and think of adult diapers here? Gil continues, clarifying, "There's a rich and intense fantasy life. The elevated experience fuels the fantasy. The act is the fantasy. To discover what he thinks he's doing in there, why he picked who he picked, did what he did, to understand his motive, you have to understand his illusions, his dreams." Someone asks off-camera, "Which are…?" Gil replies, "I don't know." Thank you, Gil, for an impressive load of psychobabble. The local sheriff goes back to giving assignments, assigning the vice and narcotics squads to the leather bars -- charmingly referred to as "the KY cowboys" here, since, as we know, no Thomas Harris-derived work is complete without a derogatory reference to the non-heterosexuals among us -- and finishes by cautioning everyone to stop referring to the killer as the Tooth Fairy. Everyone laughs and ignores him.
In the scene, all the law enforcement officials are carrying on about how they don't know the Tooth Fairy's motives while Gil says woozily, "It's in his dreams." "The motive?" asks someone in a suit. "Yes," Gil replies simply. The guy in the suit asks Gil, "Fisher was saying you're the one who got Garrett Jacob Hobbs, and that Doctor Lecktor three years ago. Lecktor killed nine people, didn't he?" Aaaaand we have our first Hannibal Lecter reference, except here he's Dr. "Lecktor." Whatever. Anyway, Gil says, "Nine that we know of. Two didn't die." After establishing that yes, Lecktor is a psychopath, the local sheriff drawls, "I understand he cut you pretty good." Jack rolls his eyes; Gil gives him a peevish look and changes the subject. Apparently, the Leedses had a dog -- currently at the vet's thanks to a puncture wound in the stomach, and the Jacobis (the family killed in Birmingham) had a cat, although the little beast is MIA. It probably wandered off in search of another person to open the cat food can. Gil commands a methane probe to see if the cat's dead and buried; before the locals can come down on him for that oddity, Jimmy Price the FBI fingerprint guy calls and validates Gil's earlier theory: the Tooth Fairy did indeed pull off his gloves to touch Mrs. Leeds, and to touch the eyeballs of everyone in the Leeds family. Everyone looks around, startled that Gil and his freakish, tangential ways have been vindicated.
The howling press mob is at the door of police HQ; Gil and Jack neatly sidestep them, but a red-haired reporter named Freddie Lounds recognizes Gil and peels away from the pack to pursue them. He apparently covers serial killers for The Tattler, and has something of an interest in Gil; sadly, he must pine unrequited. Good thing Gil just threw him through the windshield of a car; tending his wounds will keep him occupied for a while. As Freddie recovers from his beat-down, Gil and Jack stand in front of a traffic light and wait for it to change while a train goes roaring by; I don't know why the train is important, but Michael Mann seems to think so, so here I am, faithfully recording it. Anyway, Gil explains why he doesn't like Freddie: "He snuck into the hospital while I was sedated after Lecktor. He pulled back the sheets and took pictures." Jack commiserates, and Gil does his man-on-the-edge thing again, noting that the Tooth Fairy's not going to stop killing until he gets caught, because "he's got a taste for it." "You do know something about him," Jack says, clearly relieved Gil's back in the game and thinking like a psycho. "Not enough," Gil says, thereby establishing the reason he's going to go see Lecktor: "I need to recover the mindset."
Molly has finally rousted herself from bed to call Gil. They chat amiably for a little while; he lets slip that he's going to Baltimore. "To do what?" she asks. He punts, and Molly begins babbling about painting the kitchen. She asks Gil what color it should be, then rejects his assorted suggestions. He snaps at her, "Paint the damn room battleship gray -- what do I care?" I realize this is supposed to show us how Gil's all stressed about the prospect of getting sucked deeper into his old work, but I suspect it's really because he's married to an annoying woman.
And now we get to the good stuff: Gil's hanging with Dr. Chilton, and Chilton is, of course, displaying all sorts of intellectual insecurity, inquiring superciliously, "Is it Doctor?" Well, on CSI, yeah. Here, not so much. Anyway, Gil emphasizes that he needs to see Lecktor in as much privacy as possible, which is either brave or stupid, depending on your POV. After running down the usual impressive array of security cautions, Chilton smarms, "The consensus around here is the only person who's demonstrated any practical understanding of Dr. Hannibal Lecktor is you. Can you tell me anything about him?" Gil declines to give exposition. Chilton presses further: "When you saw Dr. Lecktor's murders, were you able to reconstruct his fantasies in your own mind? Was that how you were able to identify him?" Gil huffs out, which is body-language-speak for "yes." Once again, I'm in awe of the all-white interior.
And now we're in still another all-white interior -- did nobody in the 1980s ever soil anything? -- and it's a jail cell. Gil sits his black-jacket-and-blue-shirted self down in the white visitor's chair, and waits for Lecktor to acknowledge him: "Did you get my card?" Lecktor asks. "I got it, thanks," Gil says. Lecktor -- who's creepily sexy in this one, as played by the delightful Brian Cox -- says, "I'm glad you came. My callers are mostly clinical psychologists from some cornfield university. Second-raters, the lot." Gil compliments Lecktor on a peer-reviewed article he recently published in a psychiatric journal, claiming he found it interesting, even as a layman, and Lecktor tries to draw Gil out and appeal to his vanity: "A layman? So many experts on government grants, and you call yourself a layman?" Aw, Hannibal, you just don't want to admit you were nabbed by a piker. Sure enough, Lecktor finishes with, "But it was you who caught me." Through the scene thus far, we're getting a Gil's-eye view of Lecktor leaning on the edge of his bunk, peering through the bars, assuming total control. Gil attempts to drive the scene again, and Lecktor correctly guesses what questions Gil has. Gil concedes that yes, he wants Lecktor to give him pointers on how the Tooth Fairy chooses his victims, but tries to sweeten the deal by saying, "I thought you might be curious to see if you're smarter than this person we're looking for." "You think you're smarter than me since you caught me," Lecktor says, suddenly all business. Gil concedes that he's not; the camera lingers on his face for a bit, and sure enough, Gil's practicing the deadpan look that serves him so well in the year 2001. Anyway, back in the eighties, Gil is claiming that the only reason he caught Lecktor was that Lecktor had disadvantages. "What disadvantages?" Lecktor demands. "You're insane," Gil replies. "But enough about me!" Lecktor replies. "Let me turn the conversation back on you, making a number of astute deductions about your current lifestyle from your appearance and correctly concluding that after I filleted you, you went a little whacko and now spend your time living out a Jimmy Buffett song and wondering if you should be pleased or concerned that you can no longer get into sick people's heads." Or something to that effect -- the conversation is much longer, and I don't want to transcribe it.
Lecktor and Gil dicker over how much of the file Lecktor can see; the camera does this weird swoopy thing, and we see that Gil is literally the only color in the cell -- Lecktor is pale and clad head-to-toe in white. It's all symbolic, I'm sure. A synthesizer burbles in the background, and we get another Gil's-eye view: Lecktor's cell contains a lot of neatly-sorted psychiatric journals. Lecktor gives the contents of the files a desultory glance, then says lazily, "I imagine if he thinks he has a relationship with the moon, he might go outside to look at it. Have you ever seen blood in the moonlight? It appears quite black. If one were nude, it would be better to have privacy for this sort of thing." Gil tells him that's all very interesting; Lecktor snorts that Gil's patronizing him. "You've already thought of this." "I may have considered it," Gil says. It's fascinating watching the two men play each other -- neither man will tip his hand, or tell the other anything new. Lecktor says he needs more material; Gil hedges. "Would you like to leave me your home phone number?" Lecktor asks brightly, and Gil gives him another deadpan look before saying, "No." He gets ready to go, and Lecktor begins screwing with his mind in earnest: "You know the reason you caught me is we're just alike!" Gil bangs on the door, and flees as Lecktor snarls, "You want the scent? Smell yourself."
And now, Gil is trapped in another hellish all-white interior. My Georgia-based sources tell me it's actually a museum in Atlanta. This makes sense; most mental hospitals for the criminally insane aren't designed with vast spiral ramps and soaring atriums. Anyway, Gil sprints through this all-white landscape (honestly! It's a hospital! Don't they ever have effluvia issues?) and out the door, clearly wigging out over his trip down memory lane with Dr. Lecktor. Well, that, or the bad synthesizer music. He then runs to the exterior of the building (also all-white) and collapses over a railing; this is the cue for Freddie Lounds to take his picture from a car across the street.
The shot is of the front-page picture of Gil and a lurid headline. We hear a PA announcer for an airline flight. Then -- in the kind of editing move the folks over at MTV saw and said, "Hey! We can use this!" -- there's a rapid cut to a guard handing Lecktor a black rotary phone. Lecktor sings out, "Thank you so much; I'll call you when I'm finished!" with the kind of politesse that's much more insulting than anything you'll ever hear in a gangsta rap recording. He then proceeds to use a stick of Wrigley's gum to get around the pesky problem of the phone not having a dial; after sweet-talking an operator into connecting him to Dr. Sidney Bloom, University of Chicago, department of psychiatry, he then charms the nighttime temp into giving him Gil's home number and address in Florida. He's so smooth -- this is my favorite Hannibal. It's so nice to see an actor who does not maintain the impression that cannibalism extends to chewing the scenery as well.
And back on the plane alluded to a few moments ago, Gil is stretching out his legs -- remember, folks, this is the 1980s, back before airlines started loading coach-class passengers with a shoehorn -- to a mother and child, and breaking out the file folders for the Leeds and Jacobi cases. Correct me if I'm mistaken, but I would suspect that crack FBI investigators know better than to gross out the civilians by laying photos of violently killed people on their seatback tray tables. I would also suspect that they don't do so, then segue into a stylized daydream about their wives walking down to meet them on the dock of their house in Florida for the express purpose of standing there and staring blankly as the synthesizer ululates. Because, you know, that would freak out the passengers. Apparently, Gil hasn't picked this up yet.
After he recovers from that social faux pas, Gil commences looking at the Jacobi residence, while the realtor tells him how hard it is to move an all-white house that happens to double as the site of a grisly murder. Gil ignores him, wandering out into the spacious back yard to commune with the trees while Enya -- or her cheap, New Wave-y predecessor -- warbles nonsense words. My friends, spend an hour listening to this movie and you'll understand why America embraced the Replacements and Hüsker Dü shortly after its release. Anyway, Gil happens upon a tree where an ideogram has been carved and a little branch has been snapped clean off. "You used a cutting implement on the tree. And you passed the time whittling and dreaming, didn't you?" he asks the tree. No, wait, he's asking the Tooth Fairy. "When night came, you saw them pass by their bright windows. You watched the shades go down. And you watched the lights go out, one by one," he continues. Oh, this is just bilge. If serial killers really do think in such purple prose, no wonder they're driven to kill -- anything to silence that florid rhetoric! Gil, however, is blissfully unself-conscious about how asinine he sounds, so he continues, "After a while, you climbed down and you went into them, didn't you? Didn't you, you son of a bitch! You watched them all goddamned day long!" You know, this tortured monologue would have more heft if he weren't currently stuck in a tree, looking for all the world as if he's about to clamber over and begin engaging in dominance displays with Koko the wonder chimp. Oh, he's a canny investigator, this Gilrilla in the mist...but I digress. Anyway, Gil's up a tree and howling. Can you blame me for thinking of monkeys?
Gil's chatting with Jack, engaging in some mutual exposition: Gil shares his discovery of the tree, and Jack breaks it to him that Gil's the new cover boy for the Tattler. This is the point where I notice that Jack's office is all white. Then we switch scenes to Dr. Chilton, but it takes me a moment to catch on, since this is also an all-white office. THX-1138 had more color than this movie. Anyway, mere minutes after we discover that the Tattler cover is making Gil's life more difficult, especially on the home front, we learn that Hannibal's been a busy little psychopath too -- the guards have found a letter from the Tooth Fairy, to Hannibal. Chilton immediately calls Jack, and then gets patched through to Gil to share the bad news. He recites the contents of the note: "My dear Doctor Lecktor, I wanted to tell you that I am delighted you've taken an interest in me. I know that you alone can understand what I am becoming. You alone know the people I use to help me in these things are only elements undergoing change, to fuel the radiance of what I am becoming, just as the source of light is burning. I have a collection of your press clippings; I think they are absurd, as are mine. The Tooth Fairy -- what could be more inappropriate. [Gil] interests me. Very purposeful-looking. I hope we can correspond." Chilton notes the missing piece and reads the bottom of the note, saying, "After I hear back from you, perhaps I'll send you something wet. Signed, Avid Fan."
Jack swings into action -- he's sending a documents team to analyze the note, which has to be done in less than four hours or else Lecktor will get suspicious -- and Gil's coming up to, I presume, either DC or Quantico to peer at the note. I'm kind of mystified as to why they're sending a chopper from DC to Baltimore, but I guess it imparts dramatic urgency. And now, after a token shot of a helicopter, we swing into the science montage. I'm not recapping it in detail; rationalize this by telling yourself that the equipment and techniques are probably obsolete by now. The crack graphologists over the FBI determine that the missing section of the note probably has contact information for a personal ad in the Tattler. Quelle surprise.
Cut to meeting full of stressed-out-looking agents. Jack outlines their clever plan: to find the ad the Tooth Fairy placed, pull it, and replace it with one of their own. This way, they can catch the killer when he trips to the mailbox for his reply. This, of course, depends on being able to make heads or tails of the ad that Lecktor placed; not bloody likely when the text reads, "Dear Avid Fan. You honor me. You're very beautiful. I offer one hundred prayers for your safety. Find help in Galatians 6:11, 15:2,; Acts 3:3; Revelations 18:7; Jonah 6:8; John 6:22; Luke 1:7." The decoding guy notes that none of the books exist in the Bible; clearly, the two killers are working off a prearranged tome. Someone raises the possibility of putting Lecktor on sodium pentathol, and Gil notes the last time they did that, Lecktor provided them with a recipe for potato chip dip. Hee! The Fibbies realize that they can figure out the book because a) it would have had to have been a book the Tooth Fairy knows Lecktor has access to, and b) they have Polaroids of Lecktor's cell, pre-tossing, so they can put two and two together to conclude which book it is.
Anyway, people begin clearing out after they realize that they won't be able to decode the article and run a similar decoy in 25 minutes, and Gil notes that they can always resort to Plan B: run the ad as-is, and use him as bait. Sidney -- who is one of those helpful tertiary characters who comes in to provide exposition, then leaves again -- implores Gil to reconsider, warning him of the possibility of a relapse. "Fine," Gil says. "I'll use Lounds."
Cut to Sidney, Gil, and Jack feeding Lounds patently false, inflammatory (ooh! I'm foreshadowing!) information, namely that they believe the Tooth Fairy is a depraved and deeply closeted homosexual. Well, if you want to flush a serial killer out of hiding, I guess angering him by printing falsehoods is one way to go. I'm not sure it's the most prudent tactic, but I bet it's effective. Anyway, it never occurs to hard-bitten newshound Lounds that perhaps his friends at the FBI are taking him for a ride, so he writes it all down and asks, "Can the Tattler rely on the straight story?" Somehow, the men in the room refrain from bursting into derisive laughter. After Lounds leaves, we learn that no, the personal ad still has not been decoded, but the character carved into the tree has; it's a Chinese symbol found on Mah-Jongg playing pieces -- the red dragon. We close out the scene by finding out that Jack's flying Molly up for a booty call.
Cut to a post-booty-call Gil, checking out his big, long abdominal scar in the mirror while his wife sits on the bed and watches. "You don't want to talk about what you're doing, do you?" she mumbles -- Molly, it should be noted, mumbles all her lines -- and Gil tries to steer her off-track by hugging her and murmuring, "Hotel rooms...illicit romance...we gotta stop meeting like this..." in her ear. Molly begins wandering off into some long and pointless story that's supposed to be a metaphor; I would tell you what it is, but Kim Griest is mumbling more than Brando and the closed captioning is no help. Suffice it to say that Gil and Molly are not a couple I'd want to double-date with.
And now, the would-be Tooth Fairy sting in DC. It's supposed to be all stylish and noir-like, empty streets in the middle of the night, everyone dressed in black, the synthesizer thrumming along, but it all turns out to be a comic misunderstanding between a phalanx of FBI agents and an insomniac jogger.
After that waste of taxpayer dollars, we cut to Freddie Lounds getting abducted as he gets into his car. Thanks to this movie and certain episodes of CSI and The Sopranos, I now have a healthy, if irrational, fear of parking garages late at night. Cut to Lounds, blindfolded, bound, and gagged, having a conversation with the Tooth Fairy. Like all serial killers, our Tooth Fairy is something of a postmodern decorator with a heavy tendency toward ironic tchotchkes. And he wears pantyhose over his face. In the scene, he commands Lounds to look upon a slide of William Blake's great red dragon, "and a woman clothed in the rays of the sun. Do you see?" Lounds -- who is most certainly interested in seeing, given that the Tooth Fairy had commanded him to look or he'd find his eyelids stapled to his forehead -- nods and snivels yes. The Tooth Fairy then shows pictures of his victims, demanding after each slide, "Do you see?" The last slide is of Freddie and Gil, from the Tattler, and Freddie loses it. The Tooth Fairy stands before him and quavers, "Before me, you're a slug in the sun. You're privy to a great awakening and you recognize none of it. You're an ant in the afterbirth." He's a black fly in the chardonnay, whatever, we get it. Just because the man's a delusional serial killer doesn't mean he's lost the ability to speak in plain, straightforward prose. "You owe me awe!" drones the Tooth Fairy. Sure. Who wouldn't be in awe of a man wearing pantyhose on his head? Anyway, the Tooth Fairy comes back over and makes Freddie read a statement he's written into a tape recorder. "It is my great privilege to have seen with wonder and awe the Red Dragon. All I wrote about him are lies. [Gil] made me write them to pull him into a trap in Washington, District of Columbia. [Gil], you will learn from my own lips how much you have to dread because I was forced to lie. He will be more merciful to me than to you. You will lie awake in fear of what the Red Dragon will do. I will be a testament to the truth of this." And how, exactly, is Freddie a testament? Why, by being set on fire and rolled back into the parking garage from whence he was abducted!
Cut to Gil and Jack in the hospital. Gil's asking, "Did he try to say anything at all?" What, other than "ARRRRRRRRGH!!!!!"? No. Jack comes over to tell Gil that they broke the code; apparently, Lecktor's been handing out Gil's home address with the message, "Save yourself. Kill them all." Gil freaks. Cut to Molly mumbling as she lies in bed in Florida, then mumbling as she investigates the noise outside the house. Surprise! It's a passel of FBI agents, come to relocate her in the middle of the night. In the scene, Gil's reunited with his family in a cabin in the middle of the woods, apologizing to Molly over and over. Molly, who may be a mumbler but is no dummy, notes, "He's after you now, isn't he?" As if Gil doesn't have enough domestic strife, his son's just read the Tattler article and is freaking out over how safe his mother is, what with being married to Gil and all. Gil decides that a little father-son talk is appropriate, so he takes the boy (Kevin) grocery shopping. Kevin says, "Barry's mom had this newspaper. It said you were in a special hospital." Gil squares his shoulders and begins his explanation: "Well, it was a regular hospital. But I was transferred to the psychiatric wing. That bothers you, doesn't it?" Kevin's not sure, but asks if it had anything to do with the man Lecktor he read about, finishing, "What happened?" Gil continues explaining calmly, "Well, Lecktor was attacking college girls, and he killed them...in bad ways. He was a psychiatrist. One of the girls was his patient, and I went to talk to him about her...I try to build feelings in my imagination like the killer had, so that I would know why he did what he did, because that would help me find him. When I was sitting in Lecktor's office, and I looked up, I saw a book on his shelf. It had pictures of war wounds in it. And I knew it was him. So I went to a pay phone down the hall to call the police. And that's when he attacked me. You and Mom came to see me in the hospital, and that helped a lot. But after my body got okay, I still had his thoughts going around in my head. And I stopped talking to people. And a doctor friend of mine, Dr. Bloom, asked me to get some help, so I did." Kevin absorbs all this exposition and asks only, "And the way he thought felt that bad?" "Kevin," Gil responds soberly, "they're the ugliest thoughts in the world." That scene having expired all the emotional gravitas allotted per Michael Mann film, the two turn back to aimlessly wandering around the all-white grocery store.
Gil and Molly mumble at each other some more. The movie grinds to a halt; I begin wondering if perhaps it takes place over the actual three-week time frame of the movie. After God knows how long, Gil packs the family off to Montana, then turns to a conveniently rain-drenched window and growls, "Just you and me, sport. I'm going to find you, goddammit!"
And then we enter what appears to be another movie. No, wait, it's the serial killer -- now identified by his day handle, Francis Dollarhyde -- going about his business as a mid-level employee at a photo processing plant. He takes time out of his busy day of being a moody loner to stare broodingly at snapshots of his designated group of future victims.
Then he wanders off to prep for his kill, knocking on the door of darkened room to ask the occupant about low-light emulsion film. A woman tells him it's safe to come in; he does, and proceeds to stammer through his request for the night-time film. We realize that he's asking for it because he's planning on photographing the group of people he's going to kill. "When do you need [the film]?" the woman asks. "Four days," he stammers. The woman turns on the light, and Francis's face changes perceptibly as he realizes the woman is blind. Just then, her regular ride home pops in, tells the woman (Reba, played by Joan Allen in a deviation from her usual frigid-WASP-wife routine) he can't give her a ride home, and opens the door for Francis to do so. Reba and Francis bandy back and forth about how she's getting home -- her stubbornly insisting she's fine -- until he says haltingly, "Ride with me. It would be because I would like you to." Frankly, that would creep me out, but Reba's more adventurous than I, so she takes him up on it. "You're very direct, and I like that," she comments, then asks to touch Francis's face, saying she wants to know if he's smiling or not. He jerks his head back, saying, "Trust me, I'm smiling." Trust me, he's not. Anyway, he asks Reba if he can take her someplace before he takes her home. She asks where, and he tells her it's a surprise. She ignores this obvious warning sign and consents to let him take her wherever.
Wherever happens to be yet another all-white locale -- this one a veterinary office -- where a sedated tiger is stretched on an operating table. The veterinarian, who evidently knows Francis, leads Reba over, and we're treated to many, many minutes of her running her hands over the tiger, absolutely delighted. Crucial questions -- how does Francis know a zoo vet? Why isn't Reba freaked out by a strange man who takes her to see doped-up predators? What sort of hollow symbolism did Michael Mann hope to introduce here? Why in God's name can they not lay off the synthesizers for five minutes? -- go unanswered.
Meanwhile, Gil's talking to Francis again as he pores over evidence: "You...rearrange the dead families into an audience to have them see what you do. You think that what you do will make you into something different. You are becoming. What is it you think you're becoming? The answer's in the way you use the mirrors. What do the mirrors make you dream you're becoming?" Becoming baked, if the look on Gil's face is any indication. Did William Petersen smoke a bowl or five before that scene?
Back in a completely different movie -- let's call it Serial Killers In Love -- Francis is viewing a film with his new blind girlfriend. As he watches the people he's about to kill go about their home-movie lives, Reba's hand sneaks over and begins running up and down his thigh. He barely has time to process this before she leans over and kisses him. Damn, Joan really is busting loose from all those repressed-wife roles she plays! Cut to a lot of heavy breathing, and a truly hideous voice singing lyrics so cheesy and ur-Miami Viceish that I refuse to recap them here. Francis awkwardly wraps his arms around Reba, and we do a tasteful slow fade up...then fade back down to the two of them undressed in bed. Reba's asleep and Francis is not; he watches Reba reach for him in her sleep and he brings her hand to his face, weeping. Oh, this is so totally a Lifetime movie moment.
We switch movies again, and Gil's busy working the Tooth Fairy case while the Tooth Fairy's off getting busy. He ends up calling Lecktor; Lecktor's preaching the gospel of self-acceptance: "I want to help you. You need to learn to be more comfortable with yourself. We don't invent our natures -- they're issued to us along with our hearts, our lungs, and everything else." Ah, so I'm thinking Lecktor's more of a Jungian than a Freudian at this point, what with Freud's emphasis on the lack of self-consciousness and Jung's big focus on primal archetypes. But I digress -- you really couldn't care less what evil cannibal genius Lecktor thinks; you want to see him put the hurt on someone, don't you? Well, this ain't the movie for it; in this one, he's merely dapper and erudite in an entirely perverted way.
Gil stumbles through the scene, revisiting the Leeds house, fully in the throes of the Tooth Fairy mindset: "I see myself, accepted and loved, in the silver mirrors of your eyes." Boom! He's cracked the case. Or smoked another bowl and listened to the Doors once too often. The end results are the same.
Back at Serial Killers In Love, Francis is stalking his new girlfriend with the devotion only a deranged serial killer tormented by bad eighties music can muster. He watches someone else walk Reba to the door; she's got something in her eye, and the nameless guy leans in to get it. Francis sees only what he perceives to be the prelude to a kiss, and promptly flips out. The lights go freaky -- surely indicating that he's snapped from being Francis to being the Tooth Fairy -- and he begins weeping in pain and fury as he rips the cover off his dashboard. Reba heads inside; Francis heads up her walk and promptly kills the man who just dropped off Reba. He then knocks on the door. Reba opens the door and asks who it is; the Tooth Fairy intones, "Francis is gone. Francis is gone...forever."
Cut to Gil, brainstorming with Jack as to what the Tooth Fairy wants: "The dream. He dreams about being wanted and desired. So he changes people into beings who want and desire him...it's a world. Killing and arranging people to imitate it. And Lecktor told me something: 'When one does what God does enough times, one will become as God is.' You put it together, you get, if our boy imitates being wanted and desired enough times, he believes he will become one who is wanted and desired and accepted." Having encapsulated the theme of the movie, Gil then turns to the puzzling conundrum of what sort of souvenir the Tooth Fairy would take from each killing as he attempts to relive the feeling over and over. Gil finally hits on the idea that he's either taking movies or photos, then...wait for it...finally realize that the one thing the victims had in common was that they had both sent home movies to the same photo-processing plant in Gateway Labs, St. Louis, Missouri. Of course, they arrive at that conclusion only after the token screaming fight about how far to push the investigation and how long they'll work. But the exuberant synthesizer music lets us know that it's all going to be okay.
Well, it's all going to be okay unless you're Reba; apparently, the Tooth Fairy took her back to his place without saying anything, and she's horribly disoriented. It doesn't help that the Tooth Fairy has just put on "Inna Gadda Da Vida." I'd scream if I had to listen to Iron Butterfly for an extended period of time too.
Gil and company are working diligently -- the G-men while flying to Missouri, and The Show-Me State's finest in law enforcement on the ground -- to nail down exactly who the Tooth Fairy is. They get it right as the plane lands. Boy, nothing like a little subtle symbolism. And frankly, this movie has nothing like a little subtle symbolism -- now the Tooth Fairy is running around his house breaking mirrors to the strains of Iron Butterfly.
Gil's speeding along to the Tooth Fairy's house, just in the nick of time. Unfortunately, since the Tooth Fairy lives along a rural route with poorly maintained roads, the car throws a rod, thus necessitating Gil's wandering through a thicket before getting to the house. He happens to notice that the Tooth Fairy has Reba on the table and is holding a knife to her throat. Jack implores Gil via CB to wait for backup, but Gil's not having any of that, repeating urgently, "He's got somebody in the house with him, Jack."
Immediately before the Tooth Dairy cuts Reba's throat -- and coinciding with a particularly thunderous passage in the interminable "Inna Gadda Da Vida" -- Gil flings himself through the window and tackles the Tooth Fairy. Wrestling, mayhem, and gunplay ensue. Suffice it to say, the results are predictable: everyone sustains severe physical injuries, and the Tooth Fairy eventually dies, mute and bloody, at Gil's hands. Cut to Gil looking extremely shaken, obviously overwhelmed with adrenaline and something else. He stands over the Tooth Fairy, who is, since this movie spares no symbolic expense, lying in a butterfly-shaped puddle of blood. Gil stares for a while. He's good at it; Lord knows we've watched him do it for ninety minutes at this point.
And that's the dramatic climax of the movie. Gil leads Reba out to the waiting police cars, hugging her as she sobs in fright, then drives down a windy country road to a house we haven't seen before. It turns out that this is Family #3 on the Tooth Fairy list; Gil wanted to come by and see them. Frankly, Gil may have wanted to wait on that visit; he looks better when his face isn't half-swollen, puffy, and lacerated. "I just stopped by to see you...that's all," he says to the obviously nonplussed family. I like the moment, because you're not quite sure if he wants to see them because he's still shaking the Tooth Fairy out of his head, or because he wanted proof that they're alive.
And then the one subtle and ambiguous moment is over; Gil's back at his beachfront house, tousling his son's hair and greeting his wife as she mumbles, "It was on the...news?" They have a little moment where she mumbles sweet nothings while he stares into the middle distance, and another truly wretched song -- well, at least I now know where the origins for Don Johnson's "Heartbeat" came from, not that I was lying awake nights and wondering -- anyway, this hideous song plays as Gil and family stand on the ocean's edge and prepare to go riding off into the sunset.