Black and White and Dead All Over

If you were checking in yesterday looking for my regular blog post, I apologize. A Blogger outage conspired to prevent me from keeping current. But enough with that -- let's get back to business!

Last year, when I reviewed the classic movie The African Queen, someone brought to my attention that Clint Eastwood had directed and starred in a film centered around the making of that movie, and suggested I check it out.

Let me start this review of that film -- White Hunter, Black Heart -- by clearing up a few misconceptions. First of all, the film isn't exactly about the making of The African Queen. It's actually fiction based around truth. The crazy director played by Clint Eastwood is not John Huston, but has a similar name and is meant to be very much like him. The movie being made is never referred to by title, but is not at all oblique in presenting as The African Queen. The film stars aren't Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn by name, but act and sound just like them. It's "fiction," get it? (wink wink nudge nudge)

Secondly, the film isn't really about the making of a movie, The African Queen or otherwise. The notion of filming in Africa is a pretense to get the director to the continent, where he spends most of his time trying to bag himself an elephant with the help of a local guide. The film is really about the man's obsession, one he can't even explain himself.

The film is also phenomenally boring. Perhaps this was a problem of expectations. I love movies, love to learn more about how they're made, and was eager to peek "behind the scenes" of a classic. Instead, I got a two-hour take on Moby Dick, with a pace even more languid than that of the movie on which it was ostensibly based.

Clint Eastwood growls his way through a role you'd seen him play before this movie, and would see him play many more times after. Yes, he does deliver some great zingers, and there is some occasional fun in watching him verbally beat the stuffing out of some idiot that richly deserves it. Still, it's all quite paint-by-numbers. Jeff Fahey is stronger as his foil, the writer brought along to Africa that reflects for the audience on what his job has really become. But here again, there's a sad familiarity to the narration of the film, an on-the-nose triteness that nobody but Morgan Freeman can really pull off.

Really, the only thing I can recommend about the movie is that -- like The African Queen -- it makes a showcase out of landscape itself. If you're one of those people who gets into the spectacle of film, this one is a wonder to behold. It's beautiful, and beautifully photographed. Even the scenes that play in act one, before the journey to Africa, have a sweeping scope to them that catches the eye.

But I'm not one of those people wowed by that sort of thing in the absence of compelling character or plot. I give White Hunter, Black Heart a D+. I think that puts it squarely as the worst Clint Eastwood movie (directed by and/or starring) in my book. Steer clear.