The Man Who Would Be King

In honor of Sean Connery I revisited one of his best films, The Man Who Would Bb King, an old-fashioned adventure film, directed by John Huston and released in 1975.

Huston had wanted to make this film for years. At first it was planned for Clark Gable and Humphrey Bogart. Then Richard Burton and Peter O'Toole, and then Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Newman suggested that these British characters should be played by British actors, and further suggested Connery and Michael Caine, and that's who ended up in the film.

The film is based on a book by Rudyard Kipling, and the script has Kipling as a framing device. He's played by Christopher Plummer, and meets Caine when the latter steals his watch, but gives it back because he realizes Kipling is a Mason, as is he. He then meets Caine's friend, Connery. The two are former soldiers who have been hanging around India as ne'er-do-wells, but have a plan to take twenty rifles into Kafiristan (which is today a part of Afghanistan) and make themselves kings and abscond with treasure.

This sounds ridiculous to Kipling, and indeed one has to really suspend disbelief to believe the events of this film, They traverse desert and snowy mountains, and then, in a great bit of luck, discover a gurkha, Saeed Jaffrey, who not only has a penchant for serving the British, but also acts as an interpreter (one would have thought an attempt to take over a people would entail learning their language). 

During a battle Connery is shot with an arrow but it strikes his bandolier, and he is not wounded. This leads the locals to believe he is a god, the son of Alexander the Great, and he is given a huge treasure. Connery and Caine have to stay until a spring thaw, and Connery starts to like being treated like a god, and wants to stay and marry a beautiful young wife. This turns out to be hubris.

Huston directs with brio, and Connery and Caine hold nothing back (Caine, who is given to overacting, chews the scenery with sharp teeth). It's adventure in the true meaning of the word, a kind of film that isn't much made today or back in '75.

There is a problem with the film, viewed with modern eyes. The local people are depicted as simple-minded, like children, dazzled by rifles and superstitious. Kipling's work is rife with this kind of colonial thinking, and it does diminish my enjoyment of the film.