A parable about colonialism and the developing world

Rating: 10/10 (12 July 2001)

My wife and I recently borrowed the VHS pan-and-scan version of this movie and were favorably impressed by the director's "smoke and mirrors" effort. The locales are not Central Asia but instead French mountain ranges and Moroccan exotic backdrops. The extras work well to convey masses of Asian commoners and priest/monks of the Buddhist/Hindu religion. Other comment sharers can review for you the plot details and give praise to lead actors Connery and Caine (also Plummer as supporting actor); my USER COMMENT will instead focus on this film as a parable about colonialism and the developing world. The script carefully locates the decade and background to be the 1890's at the dawn of the British Victorian Empire that subjugated many parts of world civilizations in decline or pre-modern capacity. The Kipling story from which the film takes inspiration tethers us to a time and place when that world superpower's "superiority" has enjoyed days of golden antiquity theft and widespread profitmaking and despoiling. The heroes of this piece are actually villainous, second-rate crooks who become entangled in a web of deceit that they spun themselves. As would-be "strip-miners" of the tribal and religious powers-that-had-been in the fictious land past Afghanistan, the duo plus translator/stooge get access to the treasure trove of the civilization but fall prey to basic sins and character flaws.
The "man who would be king" lets power go to his head as did victors in the Colonial expansionist ages of the past and present. By their doomed attempt to get everything away from the underprivileged, the would-be Colonialistic oppressors get their comeuppance. Such Western macho consumerists, despite some feeble self-serving propaganda, are still human and vulnerable. Their divine pronouncements to "know it all" receive exposure in the end as having been cheap imitations of what life is really all about. Down with such "god-kings" who deserve the bites of the weak who are about to be raped! Their downfall will not be slow-motion sequences but swift thwacks of the Reaper's scythe. The true and valid relationship of the developed, Western nations toward those sheltered by remoteness must be one of co-development along with democratic progress and humanitarian improvement. Unfortunately, the world powers didn't learn a whole lot from such 19th century parables during 1901-2000; let's hope that Asian peoples will have their stories told and lay hold on the attention of the world for longer than just the "run" of CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON from last year. See this film with your family and talk about who loses it all and who survives with an authentic story worth telling.