Sexyloutak
Absolutely the worst movie.
Dana
An old-fashioned movie made with new-fashioned finesse.
Billy Ollie
Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable
kengonzalez-89582
The ghost and the darkness is based on the Tsavo lions- two lions in the late 19th century who stopped the construction of a river bridge in Africa because they enjoyed feeding on the workers. The film is not bad but somewhat inaccurate but the Lion sequences are really good. Michael Douglas-who also produced the film- wrote a character for himself which doesn't really add much to the film and Val Kilmer as the main lead isn't really all that, even keeping in mind he is playing a real character. Regardless the African scenery and the lion scenes are great.
yvesdemaria
first its really nice and good that sometimes very original stories come out of Hollywood, a movie in Africa at the end of the 19th century is not necessarily what would attract the most viewers (i guess), so i give 10/10 for the originality of the story.great atmosphere and on-site filming in Africa, this was really enjoyable.the movie starts great, but then slowly it feels like its forcing itself to go forward, the story telling becomes less and less smooth.michael douglas an actor i love i thought didn't act well in this movie, may be because i am so used to watching him as a NY socialite millionaire CEO but still i feel he didn't act well.finally, i thought the way the lions were depicted is wrong and ''racist'', lions are wild animals who eat meat so they hunt which is totally normal, however in the movie they are depicted as evil monsters with a black and dark heart, whereas they are only doing what animals do, hunt for food.
NateWatchesCoolMovies
Nothing beats the sheer adventurous spirit and eerie primal mythos that fuels Stephen Hopkin's The Ghost And The Darkness. It's a go-to comfort movie for me whenever I'm feeling down or stuck inside on a rainy night. It's like a campfire tale told on a quite windless night on the Serengeti, and like all the best scary stories, this one has roots in fact. In 1898, production of the East Africa Railroad along the Tsavo River was stalled for weeks, the workers suffering repeated attacks from two savage, mysterious lions. Acting against instinct, killing for sport rather than food and disappearing back into the night as quickly as they came, they were so ferocious and relentless that locals gave the eerie nicknames "the ghost and the darkness." The story has film written all over it, and Hopkins chooses the swashbuckling, Universal style horror route, and an irresistible tone. Val Kilmer, in his heyday, plays Patterson, an engineer sent by the boorish railroad tycoon Beaumont (Tom Wilkinson, chewing scenery like steak) to speed up production and pick up the slack in order to finish ahead of schedule. Not on the lions watch. He's scarcely arrived when they begins their endless tirade of horrific attacks, forcing him to trust in the skills of leathery game hunter Remington (Michael Douglas), sort of like Van Helsing crossed with Indiana Jones. The film clocks in under two hours but it seems longer somehow, like we're stuck with them in real time as the hopelessness of the situation sets into our bones, raising the stakes for our hunters and hammering home how terrifying an ordeal like this must be. Casting is on point here, watch for Bernard Hill as the sympathetic camp doctor, the late Om Puri and a brief early career cameo from Emily Mortimer as Patterson's wife. Occasionally straying into the realm of melodrama is this one's only fault, for the most part it's a hair raising, nightmarish account of adventure and terror told with style, packed with atmospheres and primed to get pulses racing.
Leofwine_draca
Here's something a bit different (not original, but different): an adventure film, set in Africa in 1896 and concerning the building of a bridge. Oh, and a pair of lions which roam around and rip people apart. Sounds like a great idea, doesn't it? Well, it is, but the execution could have been a bit better. The main problem is that the script is too concerned with the characters and not with the lions - it's over halfway through the film before the confrontation between man and beast arrives. Thus there are plenty of ponderous moments which lack the necessary thrust and sparkle of other parts of the film, and these detract from the piece as a whole.Another problem is with the casting of Val Kilmer as the hero. Now I'm pretty ambivalent when it comes to Val, but it has to be said that he gives a pretty poor performance here and lacks the necessary charisma of, say, Harrison Ford. Therefore, as a lead, he's bland, and that's not a good thing to have in a film. Thankfully we are compensated somewhat by the casting of Michael Douglas as a seasoned, over the top game hunter. The supporting cast is especially good, with a weaselly Tom Wilkinson (THE FULL MONTY) and plenty of other familiar faces.The back of the box said there were some 'gory' moments, but as a whole it's pretty tame, relying on suggestion rather than in your face blood and guts for effectiveness. There are some gruesome flashes of a torn corpse which work, but all of the other deaths are pretty similar: lion jumps on somebody and kills them off screen. The lions themselves are excellent, and Stan Winston is to thank for the creatures which grace our screens and look extremely life-like.While THE GHOST AND THE DARKNESS has some superior suspenseful moments, there are too many stupid and mishandled action bits which just don't ring true. Val Kilmer falls off a beam after being attacked by a bird, the final chase (up a tree, of all places) is pretty contrived too. The film works best when pondering the thought that the lions are not living creatures, but in fact spirits of the land, claiming vengeance for Mother Nature. These bits are unsettling and eeriest, but unfortunately everything else is generic and thinks that it's better than it really is. Okay, but not as amazing as I'd heard.
