For one thing, this lacks the Saturday morning serial aspects of ``Stanley and Livingstone'' and is nowhere near as "exciting". On the other hand, it's a more profound film that tells us much more about both men and the demons that drove them. So it is definetly preferable.

Most of us probably remember the story as the quest of cynical American newspaperman Henry Morton Stanley for Dr. David Livingstone, an aged English missionary who hadn't been heard from after hiking into largely unexplored African territory in the late 19th century.

Stanley's critics - and they were legion in his day - reacted to his headline-making trek about the way some of us might react if we heard the National Enquirer had hired Jerry Springer to search for Bigfoot. The stuffy British society of world explorers wondered aloud why anyone needed to search for Livingstone anyway.

``He knows where he is,'' says Markham (Edward Fox), head of the Royal Geographic Society. Besides, says Markham, if Livingstone was going to grant somebody an interview, it would be a British journalist and not some nobody from a Yank tabloid. One also gets the distinct impression nobody in the British community of explorers really gave a hot damn what had become of Livingstone.

Most of the 1939 film was spent following Stanley's recklessly bold safari into hostile territory. Tracy portrayed Stanley as an arrogant but resourceful adventurer who wasn't going to let anything keep him from walking up to his quarry some day and, with inspired cockiness, greet him with one of the most famous opening lines in pop culture history: ``Dr. Livingstone, I presume.''

Unlike Tracy's plucky hero, actor Aidan Quinn's Stanley is a moody, often cruel man who we discover is haunted by a nightmare past. Likewise, Nigel Hawthorne's Livingstone isn't the serene Christian philosopher Hardwicke gave us, but rather a decent but obsessed man with a wild look in his eye that may remind you somewhat of Hawthorne's Oscar-nominated performance in ``The Madness of King George.''

This Stanley also says some bizarre things every now and then. For instance, a slave trader (Kabir Bedi) rationalizes his occupation by explaining that he's taking savages and making a place for them in a more advanced culture. But when he offhandedly tells Stanley there are worse things than being in chains, Stanley rebuts that statement, saying he knows there's nothing worse than slavery - from personal experience.

Later in the movie Stanley, who has a touch of fever, hallucinates in his sleep and starts speaking in the Welsh language, convincing the concerned Livingstone that this Stanley fellow may not be exactly what he claims to be.

In truth, you're going to learn things about Stanley you surely didn't know before. For one thing, that was a phony name and he was a phony American. During the Civil War, we learn, he somehow fought for both sides. How that happened is a shameful secret the man has carried for years.

Stanley also does some appalling things. When the safari comes upon the corpse of a native, tortured and staked out by hostiles who've vowed to kill all strangers, a native woman goes to pieces and utters an ululating scream that Stanley fears will bring the hostiles running. While the rest stand around gaping at the pathetic, frightened woman, Stanley walks over and punches her.

Livingstone, too, is a revelation. He tells Stanley that he was a miserable father to his own children and deserted his loving wife in order to fulfill his secret mission - to find the source of the river Nile. If you thought he was just another Albert Schweitzer, you're only half right. Sunday's movie suggests he wanted to take his place in history among the world's greatest explorers.

Why was the British establishment never especially eager to ``find'' him? ``I'm a cranky old goat whose views are an embarrassment,'' Livingstone tells Stanley.

Still, the movie does tell us a great bond of friendship was formed between the two men - that Stanley considered Livingstone to be the father he never had while Livingstone thought of Stanley as nearly the reincarnation of his dead son, killed in the American Civil War.