by Sarah Clinton

Created on: May 01, 2008   Last Updated: May 02, 2008

Here in the United States, we like to consider ourselves a very "civilized" people, and tend to have very misguided perceptions of the people and conditions of foreign countries. The Ghost and the Darkness, released in 1996, is a classic pictorial representation of our wide-spread stereotype of life in Africa. Though this film won an Oscar in 1997 for Best Effects and was nominated for the ASC award for Outstanding Achievement, it was also nominated in the Razzies for the Worst Supporting Actor (Val Kilmer). Obviously, this is a film that you either love or hate, with nary an opinion in between. Notable actors in this film are Michael Douglas (The War of the Roses, Fatal Attraction), Val Kilmer (Top Gun), and Tom Wilkinson (Sense and Sensibility, Crime and Punishment).

The Ghost and the Darkness opens with Lt. Colonel John Patterson accepting the daunting task to oversee the construction of a bridge over the Tsavo River within a deadline of 6 months. As something of an incentive, Sir Robert Beaumont, his contractor, promised to use all of his power and influence to ruin the Lt. Colonel personally if the bridge was not completed on schedule.

The first day Patterson arrives at Tsavo, he kills a lion that had been terrorizing the camp, gaining trust and notoriety with the workers. However, this does not last long as two more man-eating lions begin eating the entire workforce (somehow, this did not serve as a catalyst to continue building the bridge). Patterson tries many different strategies to trap and dispose of the beasts, but every one of them failed, generally with disastrous results.

When Sir Beaumont visits to check on the progress and finds that his workers are being used for the lunch of the local wildlife, he is furious and contacts the famed American big-game hunter Charles Remington to dispose of the lion menace. Patterson and Remington work continuously for weeks to kill the lions. They finally succeed in locating the lions' den, where they conclude, horrified, that the lions killed out of amusement rather than hunger. They manage to kill one of the lions that night. Thinking they are near to victory, they go to sleep. When Patterson wakes up, he discovers that Remington had been dragged off and maimed during the night. Driven by blinding anger and remorse, he kills the remaining lion that night, barely escaping with his life. Afterwards, the bridge is completed, and the Colonel returns home, finally able to see his wife and first-born son.

The Ghost

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