William Goldman has told us within seconds that John is kind, honorable, curious, smart, courageous, and without a dark side. The bridge builder soaks up the extraordinary beauty of animals and landscape as the train rolls across Africa. Assuming the status of a legend by tracking and killing a murderous lion that has terrified the workers, John settles into the hot, hard work of building a bridge on schedule. And then the brace of lions starts the horrific rampage. Because they violate all the tenets of lion lore, they are seen by the workers not as animals, but as evil spirits.
Terror infects the workforce.
As they track the lions, John and Remington know they are dealing with metaphorical evil. Playing against type, Michael Douglas and Val Kilmer create off-beat, sympathetic characters who let us know there is a great deal about them we don't know. Mercifully, William Goldman doesn't complicate his tale with excessive explanations of his characters. The audience has to look away, and each time it does, the spell is broken. We all remember movies in which terror rose in our throats over imagined horrors.