"The Preacher's Wife" (Gen), Virgin, Savoy, UCI Coolock, Tallaght, Omniplex, Santry
Angels, it seems, are making a comeback, or so publishers marketing departments have been assuring us recently. But forget any suggestion of metaphor or symbolism in The Preacher's Wife we have an impeccably dressed angel called Dudley, irrefutably incarnate in the form of Denzel Washington, who takes his instructions from on high and is far too substantial to dance on a pinhead.
He is more than willing, however, to dance with the preacher's sweet natured wife (Whitney Houston), who has been a bit neglected of late by her well meaning, harassed husband (Courtney B. Vance), who has lost his belief in himself and is about to let his parish church be bought by the town's greedy developers. Enter Dudley to sort out his problems.
This is less a Hollywood riposte to Wim Wender's allusive Wings of Desire and Far Away, So Close, than an attempt by the director Penny Marshall to recreate the easy charm of 1940s comedies such as It's A Wonderful Life, and The Bishop's Wife, directed by Henry Koster in 1947, on which this film is loosely based.
Somewhere in the transformation and updating process the charm has become calculated and the tone nostalgic for small town, neighbourly, black America; the character of Dudley seems merely smarmy and ingratiating as he attempts to ease the tensions between the couple, and the whole fable about the revival of goodness and faith in the community is unbearably sentimental.
It's not clear what the audience for this is; it's a Christmas tale, which is about as welcome in January as turkey fricasse. Presumably Whitney Houston fans will enjoy it; we certainly get to see a lot of her singing, in and out of church, and this is gospel music at its most rousing, with the backing of members of the Georgia Mass Choir and Band, all beaming beatifically. As for Denzel Washington, he could certainly do with a guardian angel to help him select his roles, since he has made some peculiar choices recently, including this one.
"The Ghost And The Darkness" (15s) Savoy, Virgin, UCIs, Omniplex
Times change, and there haven't been many films in recent years about the bravery of white men battling with the African wilderness, but veteran screenwriter William Goldman's fascination with a famous story - from the heyday of the British Empire led him to spend several years developing The Ghost And The Darkness. The result is an unusual film - part modern action movie, part old fashioned adventure epic - which, though flawed in parts, has enough energy to hold the attention of most audiences.
The story of the lions of Tsavo occupies a central place in the mythology of late 19th century colonialism. In the 1890s, while the European powers were competing for control over the East African ivory trade, the British set out to build a railway link between Mombasa and Lake Victoria. During the construction of a bridge over the River Tsavo, the work was brought to a stand still by the continual attacks of two man eating lions, who killed more than 130 workers within the space of a few months before they were finally killed. The lions, known as "Ghost" and "Darkness" to the local Masai, were reputed to have supernatural powers, and were seen as Africa's revenge on the white man.
Goldman's adaption the story centres on the Irish bridge building engineer, John Patterson (Val Kilmer), who sets out to kill the man eaters with the assistance of Remington (Michael Douglas), an American born hunter. This classic Boys' Own tale is translated into the post colonial 1990s with a few perfunctory nods towards changing values - the voiceover narrative is provided by the local wise man Samuel (the South African actor Kani) - but this is a white man's story, in which the courage and ingenuity of the colonists triumphs over the unknown terrors of the Dark Continent. Kilmer wisely keeps his attempt at an Irish accent to a minimum, although his muted performance leaves something of a vacuum at the centre of the film. Douglas, by contrast, goes wildly over the top in his role as a sort of conflation of Ernest Hemingway and Wild Bill Hickock.
Australian director Stephen Hopkins has had an undistinguished track record up to now, including the lacklustre Predator 2 and the truly awful Blown Away, but his work here is lifted above the ordinary by the cinematography of the great Vilmos Zsigmond, whose lighting of the dramatic landscapes (the film was shot on location in South Africa) gives the film an epic scale. Some of the sequences with the lions are truly scarifying, which is an achievement in itself in an era when the dark corners of our imaginations tend to be occupied by monsters and serial killers rather than plain ordinary wild animals.
