Dennis Farina RIP: His 5 Most Memorable Roles

No.4 Jack Crawford €“ Manhunter (1986)

manhunter Farina takes on the character of FBI agent Jack Crawford from Thomas Harris€™s best selling series of Hannibal Lecter novels. Farina€™s character is the agent in charge of the FBI Behavioural Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia. The story follow Harris€™s first novel in the series, Red Dragon. In which Crawford convinces expert profiler Will Graham (William Petersen), out of self imposed exile to catch a serial killer, the Tooth Fairy. Petersen€™s character is a tortured soul, haunted by years of profiling killers and a near death experience at the hands of Hannibal Lecter. As the film goes on Graham struggles with profiling the mindset of another serial killer. You can see he€™s burnt-out. This is where Farina€™s character really shines because he knows Graham€™s burnt out but keeps pushing forward. Crawford manipulates Graham into taking on the case, knowing that he€™ll become obsessed with catching the Tooth Fairy. The character of Jack Crawford has been played by three different actors since Manhunter, Scott Glenn, Harvey Keitel and Laurence Fishbourne. But none have captured the cold, clinical, no-nonsense FBI agent that Farina brought to screen. He brought a sense of weight to the character; a cold realism that Crawford would do whatever it takes to catch the Tooth Fairy.
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