The Ghost and the Darkness

"The Ghost & the Darkness" is a very good adventure flick set in Africa in the late 19th century, and is based on a true incident. Kilmer plays an engineer sent to build a railroad bridge over the Tsavo river. Work is halted by attacks from two man-eating lions which terrorize the workers. Seems these lions are exhibiting behavior not seen in lions before, i.e. they appear to be hunting for sport ('the Ghost' and 'the Darkness' are the names given to the 2 lions by the native workers). Douglas plays a famous renegade American hunter, a tragically scarred Civil War veteran, hired by the railroad to kill the lions.

Good adventure, well-paced, with stunning photography of the African countryside. The movie has an "R" rating which I can't figure out; perhaps because of the bloodiness of the lion dinner scenes (and lunch, and breakfast, and between-meal snacks....). I have seen many PG13's which have more blood & guts than this.

I give it a straight A; my 10-year old son gave it an enthusiastic thumbs-up also).

...Well according to Hollywood anyway, since "The Ghost and the Darkness" actually takes lots of liberties with its story, about the two man-eating lions of Tsavo. Quite odd since it presses in the beginning that everything you're about to see in this movie, no matter how unbelievable it seems, has truly occurred. Oh well, just a good and clever marketing trick, lets leave it to that. No way they can pull off a trick like this now days in the days of Internet, were with only a few clicks you can look up an historical event. Of course the biggest difference between the truth and fiction is the Remington (Michael Douglas) character, who never existed in real life and also the looks of the lions, who in real life were not maned. But oh well, are these movie changes bad or not believable? No, it strengthens the story and makes it all even more interesting to watch.

I've always loved watching "The Ghost and the Darkness". It's a great adventurous movie with action in it and some good characters, all set in a beautiful environment.

The story is perfectly adventurous and action filled. It's all the more amazing knowing that the story has actually occurred in real life, over an hundred years ago already. The movie and its story is kept simple and allows its images and characters to tell the story.

What I like about the movie is that it fully treats the 'Ghost' and the 'Darkness' (the nicknames of the two man-eating lions) as movie characters. It shows them as smart thinking creatures and not simply just as 'monsters', even though they kill for pleasure (at least in the movie they do).

The movie is definitely helped by its environment and atmosphere. The beautiful African land serves as a perfect backdrop for the movie and also works quite claustrophobic, since the movie is for most part set at just this one location (the railroad and bridge building-site). Also the great Jerry Goldsmith musical score suits the environment and perfectly adds to the atmosphere of the entire movie, as does the cinematography from Vilmos Zsigmond.

Michael Douglas plays a good role and actually shows with this movie how versatile he is as an actor, though his role is definitely smaller than he is credited for in the movie. As also the producer of this movie he obviously claimed to become the top-billing actor of the movie as well. In fact the main part of the movie is being played by Val Kilmer, who plays his character in a way like we're used of him; a humble way and he doesn't try too hard to impress in his role, which also leaves room for the other actors to shine and of course allows the story to be told best. Surprising to see that the movie also had actors in it, that would later turn into big well known names such as Bernard Hill and Tom Wilkinson, in some good roles. Also Om Puri gives a nice performance.

A perfectly fun and simple adventurous action movie. This is high quality entertainment.

8/10

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Stephen Hopkins directed this adventure film that stars Val Kilmer as Col. John Henry Patterson, who, in 1898 Africa, is in charge of building a bridge, but work is halted because two lions have been killing workers, and the locals believe the lions to be avenging tribal spirits. To show them that they are ordinary lions, his government hires noted hunter Remington(played by Michael Douglas) to join Patterson to kill them, but even he admits to having never seen anything like these lions before... Exciting and tense film is nicely acted and directed, with a most interesting story that was based on fact, incredibly enough!

True story, two lions killed a hundred railroad workers in east Africa in 1898. Col. Pattersson is sent from England to supervise the building of a bridge in Uganda across the Tsavo river. He ends up a bit over his head when the lions show up. He teams up with famed hunter Charles Remmington to bring down the cats from hell.

It wasn't until I heard what other people had to say that I realized that The Ghost in the Darkness is half way to a Jaws rip-off. But of course this is a real story. I've even seen the hides of the two lions preserved in Chicago's natural history museum. They were actually maneless, but for obvious reasons this film gives its killer fuzzballs the hunk hair which makes Lions stand out from any other cat.

I do know that cats are generally more aggressive than dogs towards people (because of their rogue personalities), but these lions are unnaturally ferocious. They are more monster than animal, which is the intended approach of course. Sometimes though it gets a little unbelievable. One scene in particular, involves the cats ambushing a dorm of about two dozen, all are killed. Regardless of their size or ferocity, are we supposed to believe that two lions can kill that many people in thirty seconds flat without one escaping. It's a tent for god sakes.

There are a few other problems with The Ghost and the Darkness. Tom Wilkinson's performance is annoying. this is too lame a role for such a good actor. I didn't think Michael Douglas was that great either. He plays the role with too much Indiana Jones in him. A there are also a couple of scenes which are just playing goofy.

In general though, The Ghost and the Darkness actually amounts to an entertaining monster movie. I'll give the most credit to the animal trainers, because these lions give great performances. I wouldn't call it a scary movie but it certainly has its grizzly parts which might shake you up some. The Ghost and the Darkness bridges the gap between Thriller, horror, and adventure, and I'm pretty sure it'll give you what you want (assuming this is your kind of movie)

(Some Spoilers) True story of the Tasvo Man-eaters who terrorized the workers working on the Kenya Ungandan Railway back in 1898 killing and devouring almost 140 of them in nine, March-December 1898, months. It's during that reign of terror the Tasvo Lions, weighing some 500 pounds each, lived or dined almost exclusively on human flesh.

The film starts with Irish engineer Col. John Patterson, Val Kilmar, sent to Kenya by his British overseer, or boss, the pompous and all full of himself the future Sir, hoping that he'll be knighted by the Queen, Robert Beaumont, Tom Wilkerson. As soon as Col.Patterson arrives on the Dark Continent he's faced with a revolt by those workers that he's in charged of with them afraid to go out and build a bridge over the Tasvo River.

These two man-eating lions have been snatching and devouring workers at will and it thought that they, the killer cats, aren't even lions but evil and murderous spirits preventing the bridge, that's being erected on sacred native ground, from being built. The killings go on unabated and it's when one of the local native leaders Mahina, Danny Cele, is dragged out of his tent and eaten by the lions the rail workers just refused to go back out and lay tracks, to build the bridge, over the Tasvo River.

Being like phantoms more then lions the killer cats are immune to anything that Col. Patterson and his native guide Samuel, John Kani, can come up with in both trapping and killing the two giant felines. It's then out of sheer desperation that the "I've never been wrong in all my life" Robert Beaumont, it must have taken a lot out of his giant ego, hires big game hunter Charles Remington, Michael Douglas, to do the job, kill the Tasvo Man-eaters, that nobody including Col. Patterson can seem to do. ***SPOILER*** Remington who after failing to put down the killer cats with both Col. Patterson and Samuels' help goes out on his own, without Col. Patterson's knowledge, only to end up becoming the Tasvo Man-eaters next victim and meal.

Far better then many of it's critics and detractors say it is "Ghost and the Darkness" does have it's share of shocks and thrills despite not having the benefit, like similar movies like "Jaws", of having any real and state of the art special effects. There's only one scene where there's a mechanical or fake lion, like the shark in "Jaws", in the movie and that was about the most ineffective scene in which the killer cats attacked in the entire film. The lions are seen mostly in close up when they do most of their damage, attacking and killing the rail workers. But the few scenes where the lions do fully expose themselves, like the dream-like attack on Col. Patterson's wife and son, are truly heart-stopping and as good as anything you'd see a like-wise animal attack film.

P.S The notorious Tasvo Lions have been said to have become man-eaters because of an epidemic that killed off most of their food, gazelles zebra and wildebeests, in the area or their hunting grounds. This forced them to go for humans as prey since human beings were the only source of food, with all their normal prey dying out, left open to them. A far more interesting clue, in later checking out their skeletal remains, to the man-eating Tasvo Lions turning to prey on humans has to do with them having abscesses and infections in their teeth and gums. This had the lions suffer extreme and excruciation pain when they had to bite into the extremely thick and tough hides of their normal prey in order to kill and eat them. They turned to hunt kill and eat human beings only because their skin or hides weren't as tough and thus easier to penetrate and not cause the Tasvo Lions any terrible pains in doing so.