A Precursor of "Raiders of the Lost Ark" made by John Huston...

Rating: 8/10 (17 November 2016)

I challenge anyone to find me a movie where a European man insults and throws an Indian off a speeding train and even get a "thank you" in return. Is it too offensive? Nah, it is offensive in such a silly way that being offended would be silly. Still, no director would dare to make such a move.
And this is how refreshing it is to discover such gems four decades after they graced the screen. The scene I just described isn't even the highlight of "The Man Who Would be King", John Huston's glorious adventure movie, but it serves to make my point, the film is fun and politically incorrect, so old-fashioned it is actually ahead of our time. Maybe John Huston found a parcel of liberty in the 70's that could allow him to explore all the colonial clichés for a great mix of humor and escapism, and the result is just too enjoyable and entertaining to inspire a negative reaction.
And how could anyone snub a film that features the two most talented Englishmen of their generations, both associated to famous spy series (although movie lovers are more familiar with James Bond than Harry Palmer), both tall and strong guys, one blonde, one dark, and both with an instantly recognizable accent. Say what you want about Michael Caine and Sean Connery, but their chemistry is as believable and enjoyable as the way they complete each other, and have fun playing their respective roles. Peachy Carnehan (Caine) and Daniel Dravot (Connery) are two ex-Victorian soldiers, free masons, in quest for riches, hidden treasures, power and the pride from going further than the British Empire itself where the sun never set, but neither did the British foot in that remote country hidden behind the Afghan mountains: Kafiristan. Speaking Arabic and knowing that the term Kafir means pagan, it is very revealing of the place's hostility if no religion ever got there.
And this is where the two men decide to go, and they take a young correspondent in India, named Rudyard Kipling (played by an unrecognizable Christopher Plummer) as a witness. They make a pact: to never drink or touch women until they conquer Kafiristan. The young Kipling warns them that no man ever went to these Godless cities after Alexander the Great, to which Peachy replies: if a Greek did it, we can. Indiana Jones was an adventurer but he was mostly driven by necessities and intellectual quests, here, you have two obvious antiheroes, driven by pride, greed, selfishness and yes so utterly convinced that they are in the right path, that we follow them with the same enthusiastic fun. And we see them venturing in these exotic lands full of beggars, snake charmers, old smoking soothsayers, crowded markets and some hints of the British civilization, but there's always more to see. That's the motto of adventurers and that's the curse of Hustonian heroes.
I mentioned Indiana Jones but indeed, "The Man Who Would be King" is such a brazenly entertaining and nicely nasty film that it would make you wonder why is it that "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is perceived as the one that resurrected the adventure genre. We have heart-pounding fight sequences, exotic locations that go from snowy mountains, road-stopping glaciers, from rocky deserts to inhabited oasis waiting for the civilization to "bring order". It has larger-than-life characters and meek, funny sidekicks like Saeed Jaffrey. The humor is sometimes racist and colonialist but it is done in such a free-spirited and comical way that it is obvious the joke is on the leads and this is typical of John Huston's movies, to distract us from the heroes' flaw by confronting them to worse people. And the two con-men are put in a place where a series of misunderstandings will allow them to be seen as Gods or kings, and just when you think you've seen all, the movie provides a completely new story in Kafiristan.
And this is where lies my only "problem" with the film, if problem is the word, I am Moroccan, so I can't be fooled by the shooting locations, the locals look nothing Indian or Afghans but pure Moroccan natives, but it's in the language that my suspension of disbelief was challenged, the people don't speak in Arabic but in Moroccan dialect, so I was pleasantly surprised to realize I could understand the people of Kafiristan. This doesn't really ruin the enjoyment and I appreciate the underrated performance of Moroccan then-star Larbi Doghmi (he'd also have a small but memorable role in "The Black Stallion") as Ootah, he manages to steal the show, and when you have Caine and Connery, that means a lot. The population also does justice to the film, I didn't spot any smiling extras and some old men were into the role, so the whole thing works overall. But it was a little bit distracting.
Huston wanted this project to star Bogart and Gable, but Bogart died, then it was Gable with Caine and Gable died, but this film couldn't have had a better pairing, the two Englishmen have a sort of Pythonesque detachment while still being into their characters, and somewhat this film is like a strange and bizarre masterpiece, so anachronistic that it manages to be beyond its temporality. It feels like an older film but the cynical tone is more modern than you'd think, and even the titles, gives away one of Huston's most cherished characters: people who lose, but never without trying, these cocky bastards are full of themselves, but what a price to pay for failure rather than a life of writing behind the desk.
There's a discussion near a glacier where the two men prepare for their death and wonder whether they'd trade their lives for another, the answer is obvious and the laughs that follow are irresistible. This is a quintessential Hustonian moment.