The Ghost and the Darkness


2/4

Starring: Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas, John Kani, Tom Wilkinson

Rated R for Some Violence and Gore involving Animal Attacks

This could, and should, have been a good movie.  After all, what’s scarier than being hunted by a pair of maneating lions?  Unfortunately, the film (which is based on a true story) is a dud.  Some of the sequences are somewhat exciting, but everything else about this movie is a disaster.

Colonel John Patterson (Kilmer) is an engineer who is sent by a viciously ambitious contractor named Beaumont (Wilkinson) to build a bridge over the Tsavo River in Africa.  He’s under a lot of pressure (if he doesn’t get it finished in five months, Beaumont will destroy him), so the tribal and cultural strife of the workers only adds to the stress.  Just when things start to go smoothly, a pair of lions starts invading the camp and snacking on the workers.  Despite his best efforts, Patterson isn’t able to deal with the problem effectively, so Beaumont reluctantly sends in an expert big game hunter, Charles Remington (Douglas).  Now, Patterson and Remington have to figure out how to track down and kill the lions before they end up becoming their afternoon meal.

The film gets off to a solid start; the drama of building a bridge sets up an effective foundation for an action movie.  But when the lions start showing up, the problems begin.  The deficiencies in the script and director Stephen Hopkins utter lack of talent call attention to themselves continuously.

The film’s biggest problem with the film is that Hopkins has no idea how he wants to present the lions.  Are the anthropomorphized monsters who can think like humans, or are they merely one of the dangers of wild Africa?  Hopkins can’t decide, and he changes his mind depending on the situation.  That violates the most important rule for any horror movie: consistency is everything.

At least we have Val Kilmer as the lead.  Kilmer is a good actor even in the lamest of movies, and his sureness helps the film a lot.  Unfortunately, the same cannot be said of Michael Douglas, whose performance as the wacky Big Game hunter Charles Remington is a lazy misfire.  In fact, Remington was an invention of the screenwriters, and it’s a big mistake to include him.  Not only is he poorly written, but Douglas is in full “take the money and run” mode (ironic since he was an executive producer for this movie).  A better match for Patterson is Samuel (Kani), his local assistant.  Those two work well together; Remington is a big fat zit.

I’ll admit that the film isn’t a total loss; the action scenes are often moderately exciting, and I liked the scene where Patterson and Kani playfully rebuff Starling’s (Brian McCardie) attempts to convert them to Christianity (Jerry Falwell, eat your heart out).  Unfortunately, the characters are skeletons and the storyline is constantly bungled by a talentless director.  Skip this one and watch “Congo” instead.

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