The Ghost and the Darkness
In 1896 the race is on to assimilate Africa. Fundamental to this task is the building of the railroad across the plains. Colonel Jeff Patterson (Val Kilmer), an engineer and hunter, is sent to oversee the building of a bridge at Tsavo, the meaning of which is ‘place of slaughter’. He his hindered in his task by a pair of man-eating lions, named the Ghost and the Darkness by the natives because they believe them to be evil spirits sent to prevent the white-man from conquering Africa. These lions acting together (normally man-eaters are solitary) attack the encampment fearlessly, and killing for the pleasure not just for food, they accumulate over a hundred kills. Not surprisingly, the workers believing Patterson is to blame aren’t too keen to stick around and thus Patterson must try to save his project as well as kill the lions. Enter, Chamberlain (Michael Douglas), a world renown big-game hunter, and together they attempt to end the man-eaters’ reign of terror.
This is basically an old-fashioned adventure yarn, although it is supposedly based on true events. The film works mainly due to the tightly written script. Essentially it is a very simple storyline, basically just about two men hunting lions, with very little sub-plot to speak of, the fact that they are building a bridge is basically just a device to put them at Tsavo. Despite the advantages of the script things could still have gone wrong under inept direction but fortunately Stephen Hopkins manages to maintain the tension throughout, although our interest does wane somewhat when dealing with the bridge-building. He is not helped by a rather wooden performance from Kilmer, who show no indication of his personal struggle to overcome fear, one of the main themes of the film. He is saved by a rather hammy performance from Douglas, as the great hunter, who, although he doesn’t appear until half way through, still manages to have the greatest impact. Unfortunately, the only the problem with the script is that there is very little character development as the script concentrates almost solely on the lions.
Hopkins wisely chooses not to overplay his strongest hand by showing the lions, especially during the attacks, preferring instead to use a combination of blurred images and sound-effects to greater effect. By portraying the lions as movements in the grass or shadows, and only really seen in close-ups of their eyes and jaws, they are given a supernatural quality, like their names suggest. He also never gets carried away with gore, again preferring to suggest rather than show. All this combined with some atmospheric cinemaphotography of the African landscape, helps to create a tense and exciting film.
Thus, although there is nothing seriously wrong with the Ghost and the Darkness to make it a poor film there is also not quite enough to raise it from a good to a great film. spooky
