The Ghost and the Darkness (1996)

Val Kilmer and Michael Douglas are brave chaps in turn-of-the-century Africa — one a bridge- building Englishman, the other a renegade American wild game hunter — who team up to do battle with a pair of marauding, murdering lions. The ripping yarn (a kind of Jaws in the jungle) The Ghost and the Darkness is based on a true story. And the dramatic conflict should be epic. But the combination of William Goldman's wildly declamatory script and the stars' showy enchantment with their own derring-do undoes this awfully big adventure. C