4 Stars: an excellent period piece

Rating: 10/10 (29 May 2004)

Michael Caine and Sean Connery star in this excellent period piece set at the dawn of Post-Colonial India as the British soldiers are pulling out. The glimpse it provides into this time period feels fine-tuned in its authenticity and the cinametography is excellent. Caine and Connery star as Peachy and Danny, two soldiers who are enjoying imperialism too much to leave it. One asked by a fellow Brit why they haven't gone home, Peachy responds "Home to what? A porters uniform outside a restaurant and six penny tips from belching civilians for closing cab doors on their blowzy women?"

The two good friends decide that just for the hell of it, they'll conquer Kazakhstan, a remote kingdom on the other side of the Himalayans. Danny and Peachy are two brilliant creations, obviously because of what the actors bring to them, but also because they are the perfect embodiment for Eurocentric foolishness. They are guided by the modern-day equivalent of the Spanish Conquistadores' 3 Gs: gold, god, and glory.
So the ambitious pair trek across the mountains heavily confident that even though they'll be heavily outnumbered, they'll be able to unite everyone and be kings. The two find themselves overconfident and underqualified when they arrive, but for a short while, very lucky. After an arrow shot into Danny's (Connery) heart gets stopped by his armor, the primitive tribes start seeing him as a God, and things become very interesting for the pair.
Because most of the film is presented as a flashback, we know from the beginning of the film that at some point things went awry, because only one of the friends made it back alive. I won't tell you exactly what went wrong, but it has a little to do with their Euro-Imperialistic mindset I mentioned earlier. However, at the end of the film I was glad that one of the two friends made it back so that we could've heard such a beautiful story about friendship, ambition and ultimately, greed.