| Warner Bros. | Release Date: September 14, 1990 | CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
20
Mixed:
8
Negative:
1
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Critic Reviews
After White Hunter there is no doubt that Eastwood is one of our most committed filmmakers, and perhaps our most profoundly introspective. [14 Sep 1990, p.C]
The most entertaining portrait of a wildly talented, socially untamed filmmaker since The Bad and the Beautiful. [21 Sep 1990, p.28]
Clint Eastwood's film isn't an African adventure epic, as those unaware of Peter Viertel's 1953 book may surmise from the title. It's an intelligent, affectionate study of an obsessive American film director who, while working on a film in colonial Africa, becomes sidetracked by his compulsion to hunt elephants.
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In the early scenes of White Hunter, Black Heart, Eastwood fans are likely to be distracted to hear Huston's words and vocal mannerisms in Eastwood's mouth, and to see Huston's swagger and physical bravado. Then the performance takes over, and the movie turns into one of the more thoughtful films ever made about the conflicts inside an artist.
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As director, producer and star, Eastwood has made his most ambitious film, traveling to England and Zimbabwe and working with raging rivers and charging elephants. He has added immeasurably to his stature in all three capacities. [12 Sep 1990]
Eastwood's performance is a built-in metaphor for Wilson's ungainly effort to be what he isn't. Seen in this light, it's a daring and moving piece of work. And so, despite flaws along the way, is the movie as a whole, which was directed by Eastwood himself. [13 Sep 1990]
Though critical of the director's selfish character, the story does make a case for the macho man as someone who won't tolerate phonies. [14 Sep 1990, p.C]
White Hunter, Black Heart is a beautifully made elaboration of a thesis that has thankfully lost its antithesis to time. [15 Sep 1990]
White Hunter, Black Heart is no African Queen (or even, really, an especially good movie), but it does manage to stay afloat. [12 Oct 1990, p.6]
White Hunter is an offbeat, thoughtful and amusing adventure. [21 Sep 1990, p.R13]
Although the odds were against anyone being able to register the legendary charismatic presence that was John Huston, Eastwood succeeds to a surprising degree in White Hunter, Black Heart. [21 Sep 1990, p.E1]
White Hunter, Black Heart may not be a spectacular success, but it contains Clint Eastwood's best work as an actor and director in years, and is worth seeing. [21 Sep 1990]
Despite one of Eastwood's more respectable directing jobs, we never sense the method to his madness - or even if it is madness. Nor can Jeff Fahey lick his own character's novelistic origins: the first-person narrator (and Trader script doctor) who by himself isn't too compelling. [14 Sep 1990, p.4D]
Eastwood is climbing peaks as a director that Eastwood the actor can't scale. Perhaps it's time to cut the rope. [01 Oct 1990, p.70D]
The sad thing about Clint Eastwood's White Hunter, Black Heart is that it fails in every important respect, yet is in no way cheap or exploitative. [20 Sep 1990, p.81p]
White Hunter, Black Heart looks good, but it's as humorless as Eastwood himself increasingly appears to be. [21 Sep 1990, p.G5]
Eastwood is absolutely the wrong actor to play Huston, called John Wilson in White Hunter, Black Heart. Eastwood is tense and tightly coiled, while Huston was gleefully bombastic. [12 Oct 1990, p.7]
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