Congo (film)

For other films with similar names, see Congo

Congo

Congo, Kongo, or Kongo may refer to:...
.

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For other films with similar names, see Congo

Congo

Congo, Kongo, or Kongo may refer to:...
.

Characters

• Dr. Karen Ross (Laura Linney
  Laura Linney
  
  Laura Leggett Linney is an American actress. Throughout her career in film, television, and theatre, Linney has won three Emmy Award Awards, a Golden Globe, and a Screen Actors Guild Award Award and has also been nominated for three Oscars and a BAFTA Award....
  ): Member of TraviCom who wishes to find her ex-fiancé lost in a previous expedition to the eastern Congo.
• Dr. Peter Elliot (Dylan Walsh
  Dylan Walsh
  
  Dylan Walsh is an United States actor, perhaps best known as Sean McNamara in the FX Networks television series Nip/Tuck....
  ): Primatologist of Berkeley
  Berkeley, California
  
  Berkeley is a city on the east shore of San Francisco Bay in Northern California, in the United States. Its neighbors to the south are the cities of Oakland, California and Emeryville, California....
  , California
  California
  
  California is a U.S. state on the West Coast of the United States of the United States, along the Pacific Ocean. It is bordered by Oregon to the north, Nevada to the east, Arizona to the southeast, and to the south the Mexico state of Baja California....
   who wants to return his gorilla, Amy, to her birth place in the Virunga region of the Congo.
• Captain Munro Kelly (Ernie Hudson
  Ernie Hudson
  
  Ernest Lee "Ernie" Hudson is an United States actor. He is arguably best known for his roles as Winston Zeddemore in the Ghostbusters film series, Warden Leo Glynn on HBO's Oz and Sergeant Albrecht in the cult movie The Crow ....
  ): The "Great White Hunter" and mercenary.
• Amy (Lorene Noh & Misty Rosas): Amy is a female mountain gorilla
  Mountain Gorilla
  
  The Mountain Gorilla is one of the two subspecies of the Eastern Gorilla. There are two groups. One is found in the Virunga Mountains of Central Africa, within 4 national parks: Mgahinga Gorilla National Park, in south-west Uganda; Volcanoes National Park, in north-west Rwanda; and Virunga National Park and Kahuzi-Bi?ga National Park, in t...
  , born in the Virunga
  Virunga Mountains
  
  The Virunga Mountains are a chain of volcanoes in East Africa, along the northern border of Rwanda, the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Uganda....
   region, who is studied by Dr. Elliot in the United States. She likes to draw scenes from her dreams, in which the Lost City of Zinj often appears.
• Herkermer Homolka (Tim Curry
  Tim Curry
  
  Timothy James "Tim" Curry is an England actor, singer, composer and voice artist, known for his work in a diverse range of theatre, film and television productions....
  ): An eccentric rich man from Romania
  Romania
  
  Romania is a country located in Southeastern Europe Central Europe, North of the Balkan Peninsula, on the Lower Danube, within and outside the Carpathian Mountains, bordering on the Black Sea....
   who offers to finance the expedition. He explains this action presenting himself as a philanthropist
  Philanthropy
  
  Philanthropy derives from Latin, meaning "to love people". Philanthropy is the act of donation money, goods, services, time and/or effort to support a socially beneficial cause, with a defined objective and with no financial or material reward to the donor....
  , but it is soon revealed that his real aim is to find the mythical Lost City of Zinj
  Zinj
  
  Zinj may refer to:*Paranthropus boisei, nicknamed "Zinj" for its former name Zinjanthropus boisei*Zinj, Bahrain, a place*Zinj, alternate spelling of Zanj, a medieval area of the East African coast...
  , where he lost another expedition some years ago.
• Richard (Grant Heslov
  Grant Heslov
  
  Grant Heslov is an United States actor and Academy Awards-nominated film producer and screenwriter. His acting credits include films like True Lies, Dante's Peak, Enemy of the State , The Scorpion King and Good Night, and Good Luck. and several credits in TV series ....
  ): Elliot's assistant and friend.
• R. B. Travis (Joe Don Baker
  Joe Don Baker
  
  Joe Don Baker is an United States film actor, perhaps best known for his roles as real-life Tennessee sheriff Buford Pusser in the film Walking Tall and CIA agent Jack Wade in GoldenEye and Tomorrow Never Dies....
  ): TraviCom CEO and Ross' Boss. He wants to find the diamond mines to finance and expand his satellite technologies.
• Kahega (Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
  Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje
  
  Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje is an English actor, solicitor and former model ....
  ): Munro's guide and leader of the African porters in the expedition.

Differences from the book

• The characters Homolka and Richard are not in the book.
• In the novel, the company that Dr. Ross works for is called Earth Resources Technology Services, Inc. or ERTS, while in the film, the company is called TraviCom.
• In the book, the catatonic survivor of the first expedition doesn't wake up and die after seeing Amy. He has a reaction to Elliot's gorilla smell but never recovers consciousness. Ross says that she will tell his position to the ERTS staff before leaving him in the African village, in order to recover and bring him later to a hospital.
• In the book, Ross and Elliot are the only non-African members (Munro, although white/indian, was born in Kenya) of the expedition that enter the lost city of Zinj, while in the movie also Homolka and Elliot's assistant Richard do that.
• The gorillas in the book kill using stone paddles, which is not present in the movie.
• The book contained a competing faction known as the Consortium
  Consortium
  
  A consortium is an Professional body of two or more individuals, companies, organizations or governments with the objective of participating in a common activity or pooling their resources for achieving a common goal....
  . This group included investors from Japan
  Japan
  
  Japan is an island country in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, People's Republic of China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south....
  , Germany
  Germany
  
  Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
   and other foreign
  Foreign
  
  Foreign may refer to:*Foreign corporation, a corporation that can do business outside its jurisdiction*Foreign key, a constraint in a relational database...
   nations also looking for Solomon's Mines. This element was not present in the movie.
• The book has an epilogue describing Amy's behavior after returning to the wild, teaching her own young sign language, which is not mentioned in the movie.
• Munro is white in the book. The transliterated joke in the movie is that Munro is their "great white hunter" that happens to be black.
• The aforementioned character's full name in the book was "Charles Munro", whereas in the movie it is "Munro Kelly."
• The character Kahega lives in the book, while in the movie he is killed by the grey gorillas.
• The endings differed greatly between the movie and the book. The crashed plane discovered by the group in the book belonged to the Consortium, not another TraviCom expedition as in the movie. Additionally the group suffered an attack by a local native cannibal tribe before they could escape, using the crashed plane as shelter.
• In the movie, the only diamond recovered was thrown away; in the book, Munro completes a sale of a small collection of blue diamonds.

Box office and critical reaction

Awards

Won (2)

• BMI Film Music Award (Jerry Goldsmith
  Jerry Goldsmith
  
  Jerrald King "Jerry" Goldsmith was an American film score composer from Los Angeles, California. Goldsmith was nominated for eighteen Academy Awards , and also won four Emmy Awards....
  )

• Best Supporting Actor in a Genre Motion Picture (Ernie Hudson
  Ernie Hudson
  
  Ernest Lee "Ernie" Hudson is an United States actor. He is arguably best known for his roles as Winston Zeddemore in the Ghostbusters film series, Warden Leo Glynn on HBO's Oz and Sergeant Albrecht in the cult movie The Crow ....
  )

Nominated (11)

• Best Director (Frank Marshall
  Frank Marshall (movie producer)
  
  Frank Wilton Marshall is a five-time Academy Award-nominated United States film Film producer and film director, often working in collaboration with his wife, Kathleen Kennedy ....
  )
• Best Science Fiction Film (Paramount Pictures
  Paramount Pictures
  
  Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American motion picture production company and distribution company, located on Melrose Avenue in Hollywood, California....
  )
• Best Special Effects (Scott Farrar) (Stan Winston
  Stan Winston
  
  Stanley Winston was an United States visual effects supervisor, make-up artist, and film director. He was best known for his work in Terminator , the Jurassic Park series, Aliens , the Predator series, Iron Man and Edward Scissorhands....
  ) (Michael Lantieri
  Michael Lantieri
  
  Michael Lantieri is a special effects supervisor on films and also was the director of Komodo . He has worked on numerous films with Steven Spielberg....
  )

• Favorite Animal Star - "Amy, the gorilla"

• Worst Director (Frank Marshall)
• Worst New Star "Amy the Talking Gorilla"
• Worst Original Song (Jerry Goldsmith) (Lebo M
  Lebo M
  
  Lebohang Morake, known professionally as Lebo M, is a South African composer most famous for arranging and performing music for the The Lion King movies and stage productions....
  ) For the song "(Feel The) Spirit of Africa"
• Worst Picture (Kathleen Kennedy
  Kathleen Kennedy (movie producer)
  
  Kathleen Kennedy is a six-time Academy Award nominated United States movie industry executive. She has worked as Film producer on many films, especially with Steven Spielberg and her husband Frank Marshall ....
  ) (Sam Mercer
  Sam Mercer
  
  Sam Mercer is a film producer of many Hollywood films such as Signs , The Sixth Sense, and Van Helsing . His career started during the early 1980s as a location manager and later advanced to a producer and executive producer....
  )
• Worst Screenplay (John Patrick Shanley
  John Patrick Shanley
  
  John Patrick Shanley is an American playwright. It is rumored that he insists in his contract that not a single word can be changed in the screenplays that he writes, but Shanley has denied that this rumor is true....
  )
• Worst Supporting Actor (Tim Curry
  Tim Curry
  
  Timothy James "Tim" Curry is an England actor, singer, composer and voice artist, known for his work in a diverse range of theatre, film and television productions....
  )
• Worst Supporting Actress "Amy the Talking Gorilla"

External links