THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Saturday, October 12, 1996 TAG: 9610120056
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E4 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Movie Review
SOURCE: BY MAL VINCENT, MOVIE CRITIC
LENGTH: 62 lines
YOU MIGHT call it Jaws with Claws.
At its best, ``The Ghost and the Darkness'' is a return to the epic jungle adventure that used to be so much a part of movie lore but has long been missing. At its worst, it's a bit much, but the movie's makers are always there to remind us that it's based on truth.
In 1896, the British undertook the construction of a bridge across the Tsavo river in East Africa (now Kenya) in an effort to complete the 580-mile railway from Mombassa, on the Indian Ocean, to Lake Victoria. At stake was the lucrative ivory trade. The construction was halted by two man-eating lions who systematically and craftily killed more than 130 workers - sometimes in broad daylight. The two beasts were dubbed in Swahili ``the ghost'' and ``the darkness.''
This much is true.
The stuffed carcasses of the two ``Man-Eaters of Tsavo'' can be seen today in Chicago's Field Museum. They are scrawny beings, though, lacking the colorful manes of their movie counterparts.
From the factual threads, screenwriter William Goldman has concocted a standard hunter yarn that is aided greatly by the fact that Hollywood hasn't done an African adventure worthy of the genre in quite awhile.
If we're going to be rolled over by constant action films, let them at least be set in such majestic locales as this, complete with breathtaking photography by Vilmos Zsigmond and a rousing (certainly never subtle) musical score by Jerry Goldsmith. (South Africa doubles for Kenya.)
Val Kilmer, looking like a movie star but not much like an engineer, is cast as Lt. Col John Patterson (a thoroughly fictional character) who spends half the movie getting more and more threatened by the lions. To his aid comes Michael Douglas, in what amounts to a supporting role, as an ex-Confederate soldier who is a specialist in hunting. They try Irish and Southern accents, with mixed results.
Five lions play the two title characters, also to mixed results. There are closeups of torn flesh, workers being dragged off to the bushes, and such, but, somehow, there is nothing close to the fear those sharks suggested in ``Jaws.'' Perhaps the pundits would have been more accurate to call this ``Jaws with Paws.''
There seems to be a problem getting the lions and the humans in the same scenes. It's understandable, but the attack scenes are quite hasty.
Nonetheless, there are those grand landscape vistas and the feeling of a faraway adventure. It's big, loud and brash - and a welcome escape from the squealing tires and explosions of our more redundant urban versions. ILLUSTRATION: PARAMOUNT PICTURES
Val Kilmer is cast as John Patterson, an engineer who is forced to
become a hunter.
MOVIE REVIEW
``The Ghost and the Darkness''
Cast: Val Kilmer, Michael Douglas
Director: Stephen Hopkins
Screenplay: William Goldman
Music: Jerry Goldsmith
MPAA rating: R (gory violence, close-ups of torn flesh)
Mal's rating: *** by CNB