BEFORE: From the urban jungle of Wall Street to a different kind of jungle. OK, so it's set on the African savannah, technically not a jungle, but you get the idea.
I tried to add the film "Spartacus" to my list last night, starring Michael's father, Kirk Douglas, but the DVR wouldn't record it - for some reason Turner Classic Movies wasn't working, I got 3 1/2 hours of a blank screen. Thanks, T.W. Cable! I guess the movie gods don't want that film on my list at this time, though I consider it one of the more egregious omissions from my life-list.
THE PLOT: Set in 1898, this movie is based on the true story of two lions in Africa that killed 130 people over a nine month period, while a bridge engineer and an experienced old hunter tried to kill them.
AFTER: This seems like the kind of movie that would have been made in response to "Out of Africa" winning the Best Picture Oscar - but it was released 11 years later so that theory doesn't really hold up. But it is sort of like "Out of Africa" without the romance, plus some of "The Bridge on the River Kwai" minus the war story. Plus add two hungry lions for good measure. So it's really more like "Jaws" without the ocean.
Michael Douglas plays a game-hunter here, brought in to help a group of bridge-builders (literal ones, not figurative) who are being menaced by lions. Or taken another way, it's the story of two plucky lions struggling to survive in the wilderness, and all they have to eat are a bunch of stringy, non-meaty African rail-workers. Your call.
I'm trying to get to some larger meaning here, but it's tough. Something about colonial Imperialism in the late 1800's, or man vs. nature. Man vs. his inner demons? Could the lions represent something more than a pair of giant man-eating felines? Tough to say. Maybe there's nothing more going on under the surface, and the best way to sum it up is to say "Somedays you eat the lion, and somedays the lion eats you." Why, thanks, mysterious mustached cowboy at the bowling alley bar! Much obliged.
My BFF Andy was in town last night, and we had a conversation about visual effects - how you sometimes can't tell these days what's an FX shot and what isn't. These days it's cheaper to build a CGI city to get the buildings looking just the way you want them then it is to wait 2 days for the right weather conditions. But since this film was released in 1996 it seems more like the opposite is true here - IMDB is telling me that 99% of the scenes used real lions, except for one sequence that used animatronics (from the great Stan Winston). However, given the level of danger involved, even working with trained lions, I suspect that there were a few CGI or post-FX lion shots (Digital Domain's presence in the credits is a bit of a giveaway) - show me the stuntman willing to have a lion pounce on him...
NITPICK POINT: The lead character seems to know a great deal about African wildlife, odd facts about giraffes and hippos. So why doesn't he know that a lion can climb a damn tree?
Also starring Val Kilmer (last seen in "The Missing"), Tom Wilkinson (last seen in "The Name of the Father"), Emily Mortimer, Bernard Hill (last seen in "The Scorpion King"), and John Kani (shocked to learn that wasn't Djimon Hounsou - but no, his big break came in "Amistad", released 1 year later)
RATING: 3 out of 10 girders
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