The Ghost and the Darkness

MPAA Rating

Theatrical Release Date

Oct 10, 1996

Genre(s)

Costume Adventures
Jungle Action
Michael Douglas
Action & Adventure
Drama

Rating (Stars)

Description

Val Kilmer stars as Lt. Col. John Patterson, a 19th-century Irish engineer drafted by Britain's railroad bosses to build a trestle bridge over an African river, thus expanding the empire a tiny bit more. In Tsavo, Patterson is instantly hailed for killing a man-eating lion that had been making life hell for native workers. But morale sinks when a pair of unstoppable big cats devour more men and destroy the project. Along comes an Ahab-like, expatriate American hunter (Michael Douglas) to help Patterson face the almost preternatural powers of the two killers. The script by William Goldman (Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid) is based on fact, though the film owes more to Spielberg (specifically to Jaws) than history. There are also suggestive echoes of Kipling and Conrad in the material and characters, and there are hints of emotional complexity and psychological nuance that make one wish this could have been a great film instead of a merely fun one. --Tom Keogh

Director

Stephen Hopkins

Stars

Michael Douglas
Val Kilmer
Tom Wilkinson
John Kani
Bernard Hill

Running Time

109 minutes

Original Price

$12.98

Current Value

$5.95

DVD Features

AC-3
Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
Letterboxed
Widescreen
NTSC
2.35:1