In this film, Clint Eastwood gives a towering performance as John Wilson, an American film director who is hired to shoot a movie in Africa. While visiting this self-centered, opinionated, and brilliant man in England, Peter Verrill (Jeff Fahey), the screenplay writer, learns that Wilson's real intention for taking on the project is to hunt and kill an elephant while on safari.

Verrill worries about the mental balance of his friend when they arrive in Africa for location scouting and pre-production work on the film. Wilson castigates a fussy and bigoted unit manager and later turns his rage on a colonial housewife who is anti-Semitic. His self-destructiveness comes to the fore when he picks a fight with a hotel manager who enjoys humiliating blacks.

Wilson keeps postponing his work on the film for treks into the bush with a black hunter in search of "a big tusker." When Verrill tells his friend that he thinks it is a crime to kill an elephant, Wilson responds that it's the only sin you can go out and buy a license to commit.

Screenplay writers Peter Viertel, James Bridges, and Burt Kennedy have created a laser-sharp character study of a sensation-seeking individual who thrives on danger and ever-higher levels of excitement. Wilson's obsessive pursuit of an elephant ends with the tragic death of his black hunter friend. As usually is the case, the local residents pay for the recklessness of colonists and other visitors to Africa. Clint Eastwood's top-drawer acting and direction of White Hunter, Black Heart has resulted in a morality tale of uncommon power.