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`Ghost and Darkness' is `Jaws' with Claws, but with only a Whisker of a Plot
By LAWRENCE TOPPMAN
The Charlotte Observer

Two cunning lions slay dozens of workers building an East African railroad in 1898. Three hunters pursue them, determined to kill or be killed. That's all there is to ``The Ghost and the Darkness.''

Plotwise, you could say about the same of ``Jaws.'' But ``Jaws'' also had Steven Spielberg's brilliant direction, dark humor, rich characterizations and a smattering of social issues. ``Ghost'' just has big, inexplicably mean cats -- enough for a solid, run-of-the-mill thriller that will pass the time agreeably without inducing tension or engaging you emotionally.

It might almost be called ``Paws.'' The lions are impersonally vicious eating machines, able to move through savanna grass as silently and invisibly as the great white shark through the ocean.

The three hunters parallel those in ``Jaws.'' Patterson (Val Kilmer) is an intelligent academic with no practical experience in the field; Samuel (African actor John Kani) has a terrible fear of lions but must face them because he manages the work camp; Remington (Michael Douglas) is the grizzled, take-no-prisoners dictator leading the hunt.

The characterizations could fit together in a large thimble. Patterson is an Irish engineer with a wife and child, seen briefly, in England. Samuel has four wives and dislikes them all. Remington has traveled the world since his family was killed fighting for the losers in the Civil War. (Sure enough, Douglas remembers twice that he's supposed to have a drawl.)

Writer William Goldman, who told a much more complex story in ``The Chamber,'' and director Stephen Hopkins don't even do much to exploit the African atmosphere.

Except for opening scenes of animals leaping and loping, shot sensuously by cinematographer Vilmos Zsigmond, we spend the whole film in the rather dull railroad camp. After we get there, we don't see a single animal besides the lions, save for brief glimpses of cattle, an owl and a baboon.

The filmmakers hint there's something sinister behind the lions' cruel, unnatural behavior. Narrator Samuel talks about the spirits of dead Africans inhabiting the camp, trying to drive off white workers, or Satan taking possession of the cats. These suggestions come to nothing, as if Goldman and Hopkins forgot they'd been planted throughout the picture.

If the spiritual side doesn't pan out, you can't say you've been cheated of physical thrills. Hopkins takes the term ``man-eater'' literally: The beasts crunch pieces from victims in close-up, and we get intimate views of mangled bodies. (``Jaws'' was content with one such moment, as Quint went into the shark's maw. But the scariest scene was the opening, as the skinny-dipper was sucked under the waves by the unseen monster.)

Kilmer is adequate, though he's always more interesting when allowed to play a character with a dark side; Patterson's too squeaky-clean for Kilmer to exploit the most useful part of his range.

Douglas doesn't come in until halfway through the tale, but he makes the part his own. I wish we could have seen more of Kani, a 1975 Tony winner in two Athol Fugard plays; he lifts the movie whenever he lifts an eyebrow.

 

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