A fun morality adventure tale with superb acting and directing

Rating: 10/10 (2 November 2013)

The credits of "The Man Who Would Be King" say it all: John Huston, film's equivalent of a great landscape painter, directed; Sean Connery, Michael Caine, and Christopher Plummer, a triumvirate of actors more British (and maybe more famous) than the Queen, starred; the script was adapted from a story by Rudyard Kipling, the scribe laureate of the Pax Brittanica. Not since "Lawrence of Arabia" (1962) had an entry in the de facto genre of British Empire Adventure been so well-shot, well- acted, and well-written. The story is straightforward, at times even predictable, but this is not the same as being simplistic or unedifying. It is a morality tale, nearly identical in plot and tone to Huston's classic "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," but the morals here are more intricately expressed. There are perhaps different morals to glean from it, depending on which point of view you take. There is the viewpoint of Michael Caine's Peachy, a con man with a seemingly nihilistic view of life who would, however, never abandon a friend or break a contract. There is Sean Connery's Danny, brave and fair-minded but with perhaps more ambition than sense. And there is Rudyard Kipling himself, played by Plummer behind mustache and makeup that make him a near dead-ringer for the writer, who is envisioned here as a level- headed observer of spectacular people, events, and places who knows how not to go too far. The joy of the tale is in seeing these personalities play out the inevitable outcome of a mad trek into the Asian hinterland, and then pondering the political, religious, cultural, and historical messages that have been artfully and entertainingly conveyed.