The Ghost and the Darkness

Call me crazy, but I just couldn't seem to care a squirt for watching this movie. I have now come to the part of my netflix queue where I had run out of movies I really, really wanted to see and started adding movies I'd heard were good but I really had no interest in watching. I just can't get excited about lion attacks. I wasn't even really looking forward to Val Kilmer. At least I retained some hope that I'd be pleasantly surprised.

Well, after watching, I determined that I was right. This is just not my kind of movie. I mean, I've definitely seen worse. It's not as if this movie was boring, or poorly done, or by any means laughable. It was interesting enough, and certainly a nail-biter at times, but I would never put it on my personal Best Movies Ever list. There's just something about the combination of guns, Africa, lions, and man vs. nature that sounds like just about the last thing I want to watch a movie about (just above war movies and westerns). At least I got it over with. I can mark it off my list and go on.

Personal reactions to the movie: Beaumont should have been mauled by a lion. I was afraid John Patterson wouldn't survive, since Samuel was narrating. Although I was glad Patterson did survive, I thought they stretched reality quite a bit at the end when he basically outran the lion. In reality in such a situation that lion would have been on top of him in three strides. I totally thought it was real when Patterson's wife got mauled (though I'm sure that's what I was supposed to think) and I hated the movie right then, but I was very relieved to find it was a dream.

At the end Samuel mentions that both The Ghost and The Darkness are stuffed and on display in the Chicago Field Museum. This movie was supposed to be based on a true story. I've been to the Field Museum. Are the lions really there? Was this really a true story? I fell for that before, when I read "The Bridges of Madison County" about 15 years ago (I thought it probably wasn't true, but I still checked several old National Geographics for photo credits naming Robert Kincaid)... not sure whether to let myself believe this one was true. Not sure I really care that much, either, although if I ever make it back to the Field Museum I'll be looking for those lions.