To Walk with Lions
Canada/UK/Kenya 1999
Reviewed by Kevin Maher
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Southern Kenya, the early 80s. Penniless traveller Tony Fitzjohn is hired to work at the Kora private wildlife preserve with lion expert George Adamson and his brother Terence. Initially weary of George's lions, Tony soon learns how to treat them and begins to care for George and Terence. He is concerned when the Kenyan Wildlife Service suggests that Kora might be shut down. George's ex-wife Joy comes to Kora for Christmas. Time passes; Tony becomes a permanent fixture at Kora.
Tony is wounded by one of the lions, crazed after drinking poison. The local tribes complain that Kora is usurping their grazing lands. The Kenyan Wildlife Service decides to close Kora, but George refuses to leave. Lucy Jackson, an anthropologist studying the local tribes, asks George, Terence and Tony to move to a game preserve in Tanzania. Only Tony agrees and he becomes romantically involved with Lucy.
After Terence dies, an old girlfriend Victoria arrives to take care of George, now suffering from osteoporosis. Meanwhile Shifta bandits are terrorising the areas surrounding the Kora. Some time later, the bandits attack Victoria. George comes to her aid, but he is killed in the shoot out.
Review
The unofficial conclusion to a trilogy that began in 1965 with Born Free and continued in 1972 with Living Free, To Walk with Lions continues the story of lion expert George Adamson. Side-stepping the wildlife docudrama pretentions of its predecessors, To Walk with Lions inhabits that most commercially reliable of genres, the action thriller. Wisely so, if only because the film springs to life during its action sequences. Whether it's a gun battle with poachers, a car chase across an African savannah or the final face-off between Adamson and a group of bandits, director Carl Schultz displays the kind of kinetic relish visible in the episodes he directed for the television series The Young Indiana Jones Chronicles.
Those few scenes where the characters interact with the lions are, by contrast, static and uninspired. Presumably for safety reasons, there's a jarring lack of medium close-ups featuring the actors together with the lions; instead Schultz resorts to wide shots featuring man and beast, or, in those moments when the lions turn hostile, close-ups of the unfortunate human victims being savaged by a crude animatronic lion's head.
Keith Leckie's script is literal in the extreme, producing such priceless lines as "I decided to call him Barnardo, in honour of Dr Barnardo, the man who looked after orphans," and "George is in the early stages of osteoporosis; it's a degenerative bone disease". Thankfully the 69-year-old Richard Harris is on fine, screen-chewing form. As he proved recently in Gladiator, his performance style - often irritating and overbearing in the films he made during the 70s - has acquired a moving, even intimate edge with age. The other cast members aren't so lucky. Kerry Fox as Lucy Jackson, worker Tony Fitzjohn's woefully underwritten love interest, deadpans most of her lines without enthusiasm. John Michie has an even tougher task as Fitzjohn, a deeply unsympathetic hard-drinking ladies man, when he tries unsuccessfully to humanise him with furrowed brows and a troubled expression. Fitzjohn's rejection of booze - he pours his whisky on the ground - at the film's close comes far too late to matter.
But To Walk with Lions' greatest problems are perhaps ideological. An implicit endorsement of the great white lion tamer as the acceptable face of neo-colonial rule, the film is likely to be far less palatable to today's audiences than its predecessors were for viewers in the late 60s and early 70s. The script might pay lip service to local Kenyan problems of food shortages and civil strife, but in the end it's a white man's story about that very precious western luxury - animal welfare. The film's Shifta bandits are simply gun-toting black devils isolated from any socio-political context. When they eventually murder Adamson, they're briefly struck with guilt, pausing, like all good savages, in a moment of lament for their noble fair-skinned master.
Credits
- Director
- Carl Schultz
- Producers
- Pieter Kroonenburg
- Julie Allan
- Screenplay
- Sharon Buckingham
- Keith Ross Leckie
- Director of Photography
- Jean Lépine
- Editor
- Angelo Corrao
- Production Designer
- Michael Devine
- Music
- Alan Reeves
- ©Kingsborough Lions
- Production Companies
- IAC Film & Television and GFT Kingsborough, Studio Eight and Simba Productions present a Pieter Kroonenburg/Julie Allan production
- With the assistance of the Canadian Film Tax Production Tax Credit Program and Le Crédit d'Impôt du Québec
- Executive Producer
- John Buchanan
- Co-executive Producers
- Gary Howsam
- Guy Collins
- Robert Lecky
- Gordon Freedman
- Co-producer
- Jamie Brown
- Line Producer
- Hélène Boulay
- Associate Producers
- Pierre Latour
- Freewheel Productions:
- Sara Giles
- Production Co-ordinators
- Jenny Pont
- Natalie Bedard
- Production Managers
- Dominic Saint Jean
- Roch Mineau
- Unit Manager
- Noor Ali Bulle
- Location Managers
- Shaba:
- Noah Kimini Njuguna
- Nairobi:
- Jimmy Mukora
- Post-production Supervisors
- Evan Tussman
- Gary Evans
- Assistant Directors
- John Board
- Howard Rothchild
- Konga Mbandu
- Yahya Chavanga
- Tony Rimwa
- Script Supervisor
- Pamela Willis
- Casting
- John Hubbard
- Daniel Hubbard
- London:
- Sarah Beardsall
- Kenya:
- Lenny Juma
- Camera Operators
- Vic Purcell
- Aerial:
- Jacques 'Jackson' Girard
- Steadicam Operator
- Jamie Fowlds
- Digital Visual Effects
- Group Image Buzz
- Special Effects Co-ordinator
- Gilbert Larose Jr
- Elephant Replicas
- Kiarie Kimani
- Animatronic Lions
- Nik Williams
- Animated Extras Int. Ltd
- Technical Supervising Editor
- Pierre Guérin
- Set Decorators
- Pius Juma
- Peter Mungai
- Costume Designers
- Suzanne Belcher
- Nicole Pelletier
- Key Make-up Artist
- Annick Chartier
- Key Hairdresser
- Dario LaPointe
- Titles
- Ciné-Titres
- Opticals
- Mangouste
- Original Score Keyboards
- Alan Reeves
- Flutes/Percussion
- Chris Hayword
- Vocals/Percussion
- Nasser Dra
- Orchestrations
- Richard Bronskill
- Music Editor
- Steve Gurman
- Soundtrack
- "South Africa", "Kongassa" - Njacko Backo; "Lala Salama"
- Sound Recordist
- Stuart French
- Re-recording Mixers
- Chris David
- Richard Betanzos
- Supervising Sound Editors
- Glenn Tussman
- Richard Betanzos
- Supervising Dialogue Editor
- Steve Gurman
- Sound Effects Editors
- Michael Gurman
- Vincent Regaudie
- ADR
- Additional Editor:
- Michelle Cloutier
- Foley
- Artist:
- Paul Hubert
- Recordist:
- Eric 'Med' Lagace
- Armourer
- Benjamin Pont
- Head Lion Wrangler
- Sled Reynolds
- Trained Lions
- Gentle Jungle
- Kenyan Animal Wrangler
- Robin Davis
- Lion Wranglers
- Randy Scott Miller
- Mark Edward Gomez
- Julian Richard Sylvester
- De Anna Michele Zarkowski
- Pilot
- Jens Hensel
- Cast
- Richard Harris
- George Adamson
- John Michie
- Tony Fitzjohn
- Kerry Fox
- Lucy Jackson
- Ian Bannen
- Terence Adamson
- Hugh Quarshie
- Maxwell
- Honor Blackman
- Joy Adamson
- Geraldine Chaplin
- Victoria Andrecelli
- Guy Williams
- John Bell
- David Kakuta Mulwa
- Hamisi
- Frederic Opondo
- David M'Boya
- Tonny Njuguna
- Yussif
- Douglas O. Ayayo
- James Ngetha
- Raymond Ofula
- Chief Haji Abu Jibril
- Edward Kwach
- doctor
- Tirus Gathwe
- Keya
- James Onyango
- Sergeant Mgatee
- Lucinda Gorringe
- Bridget
- Steenie Njoroge
- Bitacha
- Ng'ang'a George
- Ongesa
- Dale Liselo
- Stanley
- Odero Aghan
- Shifta leader
- Charles Njenga
- police constable
- Sasha Hurt
- Tony's girlfriend
- Regina Macharia
- secretary
- Mohamed Ahamed Jama
- Somali
- Caroline Kere
- Maxwell's wife
- Sarah Malinda
- Maxwell's daughter
- Yusuf Lubembe
- GSU ranger
- Kamau Wa Mbugwa
- Nairobi constable
- Omar Godana
- Somali herdsman
- Les Cardillo
- Jack at Norfolk
- Shannon Smullian
- tourist girl
- Tabou
- Sasha
- Zarr
- YahZoo
- Simba
- Zamba
- Fatu Mata
- lions
- Certificate
- 12
- Distributor
- Optimum Releasing
- 9,891 feet
- 109 minutes 54 seconds
- Dolby Digital
- In Colour
- Anamorphic