White Hunter Black Heart
Clint Eastwood's thinly veiled portrayal of John Huston and the filming of The African Queen (based on a novel by longtime Huston associate Peter Viertel) has its charms and a handful of fabulous scenes, but the whole movie feels more like a vehicle for Eastwood to chew scenery playing one of his idols than an attempt to tell any kind of a story. Eastwood was yet to reach his pinnacle as a director at this point, and it comes off more than a little ironic that a movie about the making of one of cinema's most famous films—by one of its most famous directors—has little to none of the dramatic impact for which any of Huston's (and later, Eastwood's) films are known.
As the director's obsession with shooting an elephant outgrows his interest
in shooting the movie they came to Africa to make, the production gets
behind schedule and over budget, all for the gratification of an ego
that stays one-dimensional for so long, the transformation loses its
punch by the end. This story probably makes for a better read than a
movie because of the extra depth a book can sometimes provide. Not to
mention having to watch a good actor hijack a film from his master director alter ego.
- August 22, 2009
DVD Extras
Nothing but a trailer.