The Ghost and the Darkness

There's a problem with making "old-fashioned adventure movies" today. True, modern budgets allow for extensive location shooting, period detail and actual Indian/African/Arab actors instead of Alec Guinness and C. Henry Gordon in blackface. But our post-colonial world frowns upon the racial and imperial attitudes that shows like Gunga Din take for granted, leaving filmmakers in a bind. Thus you get queasy compromises like The Four Feathers (2002), which play to each sensibility and fail at both.

The Ghost and the Darkness (1996) is like that. Stephen Hopkins's loose adaptation of The Man-Eaters of Tsavo (which previously inspired 1952's Bwana Devil) ran afoul of egomaniacal stars Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas, altering this adventure story into a bloated star vehicle. Critics sniffed at the movie as "Jaws with lions" while audiences largely ignored it. The film has its moments but sinks under some ill-advised narrative decisions - namely a profoundly obnoxious deuteragonist.

Colonel John Henry Patterson (Val Kilmer) is recruited by an English railroad magnate (Tom Wilkinson) to construct the Uganda Railway through British East Africa. Patterson finds the work camp riven by tensions between native Africans and Indian coolies, even before a larger threat arrives. Two lions begin attacking workers, with Patterson unable to stop them. Desperate to stop the attacks, Patterson calls in Charles Remington (Michael Douglas), an eccentric American hunter to help trap the seemingly unstoppable predators.

The Ghost and the Darkness draws on John Henry Patterson's colorful memoirs. The Tsavo lions slaughtered dozens of workers before Patterson killed them. Historians and biologists alike still debate what drove these creatures to a murderous rampage. Patterson himself is a fascinating personage, a soldier, engineer and hunter who served in India, oversaw construction of the Uganda Railway and discovered a new species of eland. During World War I he commanded a battalion in Britain's Jewish Legion at Gallipoli and Allenby's Palestinian campaign, remaining a lifelong advocate for Zionism. Between the lions and their hunter there's plenty of cinematic material.

The Ghost and the Darkness certainly has moments of high adventure. Val Kilmer's Irish accent is dodgy but his actual performance works well-enough, a single-minded professional out of his depth facing lions. (Whether it's fair to the real Patterson is another issue.) Vilmos Zigmond's photography makes Africa alternately beautiful and menacing. To Hopkins' credit, he stages several effective set pieces: one lion fighting his way out of a rail car trap proves more terrifying than the actual attacks. Jerry Goldsmith's rousing score adds a touch of grandeur. So where does Ghost go wrong?

One culprit is William Goldman's script. The writer of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid tries to mash the silliness of '30s adventure serials with modern PC sensibilities. Thus we have Tom Wilkinson's mustache-twirling tycoon, who actually tells Patterson that he enjoys torturing his employees. There's also narrator Samuel (John Kani), a modern Man Friday who swills booze and cracks jokes with the heroes like a frat brother. Ghost hints at supernatural explanations for the attacks, generating cheesy opticals of Patterson and Co. bewitched by lion eyes, but doesn't fully commit to it. When all else fails Goldman falls back on cliches (a dream sequence, seriously?), clunker dialogue and set pieces cribbed from Jaws.

But the biggest miscalculation by far is Remington. Goldman claims Michael Douglas came on board, took a minor character as his own and beefed up the part accordingly. Remington is an ill-conceived Great White Hunter caricature, an ex-Confederate soldier living with Masai warriors, all shaggy hair and deranged leering. In other words, someone H. Rider Haggard would consider too outlandish. Douglas's frightful hamming doesn't help, twitching, bugging his eyes and even paraphrasing Dirty Harry's "Do I feel lucky?" speech. This awful character sinks the movie almost singlehandedly, reducing a likely indignant Val Kilmer to virtual spear carrier.

The Ghost and the Darkness really should be a lot better. If Goldman had a clearer handle on the story, or if less "difficult" stars played the leads, it could be fine escapist fun. Instead we're stuck with an overwrought, dramatically hollow creature feature.