empire runs into a snag

Rating: 10/10 (6 August 2017)

Showing that he hadn't lost his flair as a director, John Huston adapted Rudyard Kipling's novel "The Man Who Would Be King" to the big screen. I've never read the novel, but the movie is something to behold. Sean Connery and Michael Caine play a pair of men stationed in British India who decide to set up their own fiefdom in the remote Kafiristan. The movie isn't just an adventure story. It also shows the protagonists' arrogance ("You'll learn how to fight like civilized people!"). No surprise that things don't go quite as the men planned.
It's more than a little ironic that the regions on which the movie focuses - the Afghanistan-Pakistan region - are back in the news in the 21st century. The more that things change, the more they stay the same. The protagonists should've learned a lesson from Alexander the Great's experiences in the region, as should every empire that's gone into Afghanistan.
But anyway, the movie is more proof of what a great director Huston was, and what great actors Connery and Caine are (as well as Christopher Plummer, who plays Kipling). Really good one.