Michael Mann's Manhunter gets the big-screen treatment it deserves at The Beverly Theater, presented in what's billed as "The Final Cut" — a restored version of this 1986 neo-noir thriller that first introduced audiences to the character who'd later become the infamous Hannibal Lecter. Long before serial killer thrillers became a genre unto themselves, this film set the template with its cool, blue-tinted cinematography, pulsing synth score, and a lead performance from William Petersen as an FBI profiler drawn back into a world he thought he'd escaped.

Watching this one in a proper theater changes things. Mann's visual style — all glass, chrome, and moody nighttime drives — was built for a big screen, and the film's tension creeps up on you in ways that get lost on a laptop or TV. The Beverly's intimate 150-seat theater, with its sharp acoustics, feels like the right kind of space to sit with this one: close enough to feel the dread, comfortable enough to stay settled in it for two hours.

Fans of Michael Mann's later work — Heat, Collateral, Miami Vice — will recognize the DNA here, the obsession with professionals operating just past the edge of control. For anyone who's only seen the more famous Hannibal adaptations that followed, this is where that particular strain of American thriller really took shape.