The Man Who Would Be King

8/28/2014

From the upper echelon of boys own adventures comes - The Man Who Would Be King! Two ex-servicemen are lolling around colonial India, it's just the start of a journey that will see them in Kafiristan. Here the mountain dwellers believe the rouge white fellows to be Gods, and thus things are about to get very interesting indeed. Written by master writer Rudyard Kipling, directed by behemoth John Huston and starring British legends Sean Connery & Michael Caine, there really isn't any way this film could have failed - sure enough the picture exudes a classy structure that is coupled with deftly smart writing. The Man Who Would Be King was a project that John Huston had coveted for many a year (decade), as far back as the 40s he was looking to adapt the Kipling short with Humphrey Bogart

6/20/2023

**A magnificent adventure film that adapts to the cinema a short story by Rudyard Kipling about greed, and the price that can be paid for it.** Born in India, Rudyard Kipling is one of the most distinguished British writers of the late 19th century, and perhaps one of the most prolific. Seeing a list of his written work is an exercise in patience, and if we think that he wrote it all in sunlight or gas and using a dip pen, without computers or electric light to see better, it is truly remarkable. Coming from an aristocratic family closely linked to colonial life, he had a conservative upbringing and his youth is indelibly linked to India, which he always portrayed as something idyllic. Still in India, he had a Portuguese Catholic nanny, with whom he prayed. Already in adult life, he

1/2/2025

"Danny" (Sean Connery) and "Peachy" (Michael Caine) are a pair of chancers at the height of the Raj in British India, who decide that they need to go make their fortune. Thanks to a little help from Rudyard Kipling (Christopher Plummer), they learn of the land of Kafiristan up on the Hindu Kush where the map makers have yet to arrive. Using all of their wits and guile, the pair head north and eventually find themselves training an army of agrarian villagers with the help of the translator "Billy the Fish" (Saeed Jaffrey). Pretty soon they have themselves a reputation, and that only becomes more revered when "Danny" is struck by an arrow in the heart! Except, it gets nowhere near his body. Never let the truth get in the way of a good story, though, and so he pretends it's a symbol of his im