The most amazing thing about Stephen Hopkin's film, "The Ghost and the Darkness" is that it is a true story. The scriptwriter, William Goldwin, is notorious for the amount of research he dedicates to his projects. The plot is fairly simple: Engineer Colonel John H. Patterson (Val Kilmer), overseeing the construction of a railway bridge in Tsavo, Africa, struggles to fend off two ravenous lions that persist in terrorizing natives. He soon teams up with a professional hunter, Remmington (Michael Douglas), and together they fight the bad guys and discuss life.

Stephen Hopkin's camera ("Predator 2," "Judgment Night," "Blown Away") catches the beauty of East Africa well, and he is quite adept at filming action scenes. Although these have garnered much criticism from those who claim the shots are disorderly and confusing, they are in fact intelligently done. When a lion attacks a group of people (a situation that occurs frequently in this film), chaos will ensue. In order to capture this adequately, a smart director will use short, jarring shots to convey a feeling of confusion.

What Hopkin fails to do, however, is keep a leash on Douglas' acting, which occasionally lumbers into the pretentious. For the most part Kilmer (who needs a little help with his Irish accent) and Douglas work well together, both doing justice to a truly captivating story