THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS
A film review by Scott Renshaw
Copyright 1996 Scott Renshaw
(Paramount) Starring: Michael Douglas, Val Kilmer, Tom Wilkinson, John Kani, Brian McCardie, Om Puri. Screenplay: William Goldman. Producers: Gale Anne Hurd, Paul Radin, A. Kitman Ho. Director: Stephen Hopkins. MPAA Rating: R (violence). Running Time: 105 minutes. Reviewed by Scott Renshaw.
A community is being terrorized by a brutal, almost supernaturally vicious man-eater, frightening the residents into a state of panic. The local authority figure wants to do something to stop the killing, but his supervisor is more interested in economic concerns, and does not heed the warnings. Then one attack becomes the last straw, and an eccentric killer of the man-eaters is brought in to eliminate the menace. Together, the local authority figure and the eccentric hunter set out alone on a quest that becomes almost personal.
PAWS. CLAWS. GAPING MAWS. Pick your favorite (or least obnoxious) analogy-inspiring epithet, because no matter how stridently the makers of THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS insist that it is "based on a true story," it owes at least as much to JAWS as it does to real life. The place is Africa and the year is 1898, but it could just as easily by Amity Island in 1975; engineer John Henry Patterson (Val Kilmer), supervising the building of a bridge for a railroad line, is our Sheriff Brody, great white hunter Charles Remington (Michael Douglas) is Quint, and Patterson's boss Beaumont (Tom Wilkinson) is the mayor. And of course, one impossibly large and single-minded great white shark is replaced by two impossibly large and single-minded lions. All right, so there isn't a Matt Hooper to be found, but don't try to tell me this comparison is a reach, especially when there is a scene in which Patterson and Remington attempt to attract their prey by laying down what amounts to a chum line around a building where they are lying in wait.
Ordinarily, it is be a remarkably bad idea for a film in any genre to make such obvious references to the classics of its genre, because they only serve to emphasize that you are not watching a much better movie of the same kind. Yet there is something fairly satisfying about THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, because it is a kind of suspense film you just don't see very often. A force of nature in its own element can be a truly frightening thing; give that force of nature a vaguely unnatural personality, and you've got the ingredients for one scary piece of work. Screenwriter William Goldman knows what works in this kind of film, and when the lions are on the prowl in THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, it is surprisingly gripping. Director Stephen Hopkins (BLOWN AWAY) directs his action scenes with efficiency and a sense of barely-controlled chaos, and he is able to make the lions' every appearance a time to scoot to the edge of your seat. He may be no Spielberg, but that's even true of Spielberg sometimes.
The reason THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS never approaches JAWS in overall quality is what happens between the attacks. The performances are almost uniformly under-stated, with Val Kilmer doing solid work as the confident Patterson, and John Kani and Brian McCardie are appealing as two of Patterson's colleagues on the bridge project. However, they all find themselves saddled with characterizations which hover somewhere between spare and insufficient. That is even more true of Douglas' Remington than it is of the other characters -- he is a hunter with a tortured past whose one moment of introspection is supposed to define his entire personality. Douglas is an actor given to playing characters broadly, and even though he is relatively restrained he still appears to be camping it up compared to his co-stars. You never care nearly as much about the individual humans in THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS as you should, because you don't really know who they are.
Still, at least there _are_ characters in THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS, and at least their confrontations with their adversaries get your adrenaline pumping. There is a tremendous primal appeal to the battle between man and beast, and with cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond providing glorious photography and Jerry Goldsmith turning in one of his most effective recent scores, THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS turns it into solid, suspenseful film-making. Perhaps there is less inherent claustrophobic tension when you take the men out of a boat and put them on dry land, but THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS makes sure you understand who has the home field advantage here. You may feel as though you have seen some of this before, but you haven't seen it in a long time, and you might realize that you have been missing it. Classics are few and far between; THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS just puts Patterson in a tree, the tree on the savannah, lions on the savannah. Farewell and adieu to you fair Spanish ladies...
On the Renshaw scale of 0 to 10 simba minds: 7.
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