Exceedingly good Kipling adaptation

Rating: 8/10 (6 January 2011)

Hugely enjoyable epic based on Kipling's cautionary adventure tale in the only film to co-star probably Britain's two biggest stars of the 60's and 70's. Adapted and stirringly directed by the then veteran maverick director John Huston, this rags to riches to rags saga seems to anachronistically belong to a different era of film-making some ten or twenty years earlier.
Not that you'd confuse it with a David Lean marathon, there's plenty of action within the detail and even if the unsavoury whiff of colonialist superiority taints somewhat the initial perception of our two heroes as hapless adventurers, by the end we're won over by their honourable and regret-free acceptance of their fate even if it means the fatal demise of Connery's Danny Dravot character and the reduction to penury of Caine's Peachy Carnehan character. A cautionary tale it may be about pride coming before a fall and the risk men take in setting themselves up as gods, but the film is more about the friendship which endures between Connery and Caine, not forgetting their devoted "batman" Billy Fish, enjoyably brought to life by Saeeed Jaffrey.
In the days before CGI & SFX, Huston does a fine job with the cinematography, particularly on location, as well as marshaling his large cast around the convincing sets. I'm fine too with the utilisation of writer Kipling as a character, introduced no doubt to frame the story as well as pointing up veracity and reminding us of its origins, with Christopher Plummer a convincing look-a-like. Caine and Connery reflect their own real-life friendship with mutually deferential performances, neither hogging the lime-light and staying true to character throughout, although as ever Sean's "English" accent never moves south of Edinburgh! I've read somewhere that some critics believe the movie could have worked even better if they'd switched roles but I don't see this at all, Connery's character has a naturally lofty demeanour, leading to his god-like aspirations, while Caine's is that of the down-to-earth conscience and confidant, both just as they should be. I also liked the minor irony in Caine's new wife at the time (they're still together, even now) spurning Connery's advances and thus, in fact precipitating the Englishmen's fall from grace.
This then was a film I've long anticipated watching and was delighted that it didn't let me down. No sex, little violence, a fine old-fashioned story well told, just the way they used to make them...