What? No Oscar?

Rating: 10/10 (28 September 2015)

Nominated for 4 Oscars yet winning none it's shocking it didn't get nominated for more. Michael Caine's performance was stunning as a best friend who stays with his comrade no matter what.
This is the ultimate of buddy, road-trip films similar to Easy Rider or Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. You're supposed to enjoy the ride even if there's foreshadowing that things don't end right. At the same time, there's a Doctor Zhivago aspect of a grand epic. The scenery is stunning as is the whole scope of the film. In Doctor Zhivago, you know from the beginning how the tale ends and you almost forget it because of 3 hours of grand (although sad) story. In this one, the two hours seem to fly by. The jokes and clever human insights are thrown out, at several levels (both vaudeville as well as more subtle) faster than than you can follow along or laugh.
The material is wonderfully unPC by today's standards and consequently, a few (few) reviewers were turned off by it but simultaneously, it was a film of it's times (the 1960's, the late Victorian era, and even the cultures portrayed in the film) that you feel immersed and drawn in. This Is An Epic Film. Like life, sometimes we are too busy having a good time, or not, to stop and smell the roses. You can do that after a 2nd viewing which I guarantee you'll want to have.