Huston does Kipling...Connery and Caine shine in this "buddy flick"...

Rating: Null/10 (18 February 2004)

Telling a grim morality tale with a good amount of humor amidst settings of grandeur and a with sense of high adventure, THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING reminds me of Kipling's more famous buddy tale of exotic adventure among dangerous natives--GUNGA DIN.
But here the telling is more leisurely and for awhile we don't know where the story is going. First, it seems a comedy, then the more adventurous elements take over and finally it goes for a gripping climax in which all hell breaks loose when the two con men are about to get their comeuppance.

As the decidedly shady characters, corrupt and acting out of a simple desire for riches, SEAN CONNERY and MICHAEL CAINE give probably the most skillful performances of their careers. My only complaint about Caine is that sometimes his Cockney accent (spoken in a hushed voice at a key moment in the film) is hard to understand. Some post-production dubbing would have been advisable.
For all of its sense of adventure, the film often plods along at a snail's pace between its more colorful episodes and could have been more tightly edited to tell its story in far less running time.
Frankly, I enjoyed the tongue-in-cheek GUNGA DIN infinitely more than this Huston film. That's not to say the film is a failure. The cinematography is great and all of the performances are extremely well done--with special mention of CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER who is highly effective as Rudyard Kipling himself. His final scene is a memorable close-up after Caine has told him the truth about the harrowing end of their adventure.
Although highly entertaining at times, it's easy to see why this story of two con men is not considered to be one of John Huston's greatest. By no means a failure, it nevertheless has enough flaws and is just uneven enough to make you realize it could have been a truly great adventure film.