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White Hunter, Black HeartRating:
Release Date: 02 September, 2003 Retail Price: $19.98 OUR Price: $17.99 You SAVE: $1.99! Cast: Complete Cast (8 total) |
White Hunter, Black Heart Reviews
Clint as the African King
Peter Viertel went to Africa with filmmaker John Huston to work on the script of THE AFRICAN QUEEN; from his experinces there he wrote the novel WHITE HUNTER, BLACK HEART. Here Clint Eastwood plays Houston, an egocentric man of action who becomes obsessed with killing a big-husked elephant - almost to the detriment of making THE AFRICAN QUEEN. Eastwood is uncanny (and at times forced and pretentious) as he tries to act and talk like the famous director, but in a way it's the perfect role for him: Huston as the bigger-than-life, Hemingway-like bully who believes in taking risks and being nonconformist mirrors Eastwood's Hollywood persona (think HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER, JOSIE WALES, even DIRTY HARRY) as actor and director.
The movie is a multi-leveled look at Huston (named John Wilson), and we see he's a fighting man for what's right and decent (he gets in a fist fight over the mistreatment of a black servant), but at the same time he can be cruel to his friends and bosses and exploitive of others. And to his credit, Eastwood is faithful to this good/mostly bad portrayal, and there's no sugar-coating at the end.
"The only sin you can buy a license to commit."
White Hunter, Black Heart seems even more impressive today than when it came out, and certainly didn't deserve its fate as the biggest box-office disaster of Eastwood's career - the same year's unsuccessful release of The Rookie took ten times more money and even Pink Cadillac outgrossed it (and that never got released outside the US). Interestingly, it seems well aware of it's problem for a main stream audience and goes out of its way to prepare them for the huge shift of tone in the last reels, setting up its own dark ending with its wonderfully written and performed early arguments about lousy little gods deciding who lives or dies in the movies. Indeed, the first half is so much fun that you tend not to notice its setting up some big issues along the way - racism, anti-Semitism, honesty, obsession and above all morality. Morality and responsibility ignored in favor of indulgence and impulse, however charismatic and entertaining it may seem, run throughout the film as Eastwood's John Huston - sorry, John Wilson - sets out to commit "the only sin you can buy a license to commit."
It's easily Eastwood's most unusual and atypical performance, abandoning his own screen persona for a large as life approximation rather than an impersonation of John Huston: the vocal cadences are there but downplayed, along with the vainglory and self-awareness. It's a fine performance and just his bad luck that Angelica Huston was on the Cannes jury that year. (African Queen co-producer John Woolf also went out of his way to damn the film as `irresponsible lies' despite its admission that its fiction.) Visually the best looking of Eastwood's films as a director, possibly because it's shot in daylight for once (Eastwood has often commented on not having plastic surgery: true, but he does tend to turn all the lights out in interior scenes instead!), but also because the visual design is so interesting, particularly as Wilson increasingly sets himself apart from the rest of the cast and crew, relegated to brooding in foreground shadows. Impressive stuff, and very entertaining with it - and a quick nod to George Dzundza's thinly-disguised Sam Spiegel while I'm at it.
The widescreen 1.85:1 DVD transfer is good, but the only extra is a brief trailer.
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