Picture 3.25/5 sound 3/5. Classic Adventures returning to like. Caine and Connery make a great couple

I don't like this movie. It's supposed to be an adventure. And yes, the landscapes and sets are awesome. But too often I get the impression that's not genuine. It's like an old movie's portray of indigenous tribes in Northern America: they must constantly sing and dance, dress like that, have skin color like that, be dirty like that, be cowards, be a bit stupid, be helpless w/o English guidance, be superstitious, be easily subdued by white men, be easily convinced that white men are their natural rulers (or worse: gods). But all of that is based on stereotypes. Not a single second I got the impression that this is real India or real Afghanistan. That would be okay if the movie didn't pretend to show real cultures. Sure, I'm not stupid: the wise men in their holy city and the link to Alexander the Great is meant to be pure fiction. I get that. The movie has designed this people like that so that Dravot's story can play out like it did. Supposedly, if you want to be generous, it's a cautionary tale about greed, avarice, megalomania and the blowback of white supremacy and English imperialism and colonialism. But how serious can you take such a tale when the movie makers portray the non-white people like that for the better time of this movie? I have one thought: it's not a precautionary tale about the colonialism. It's a guideline for doing colonialism better and it's a jingoistic manifest of the English imperial mindset. Given how two English tricksters equipped with a British sense of superiority were able to temporary subdue this people and win a private empire with immeasurable fortunes, how well could the real British king and its real army fare? The adventure is also held back by the fact that these two buddies are strange. They sometimes remind me of the *"Dumb and dumber"* duo on their way to Aspen. I wished they were more serious from the start. Sometimes this is a comedy but I'm not sure Kipling's story was supposed to be comedy. The only interesting part of this story is perhaps the part when Dravot becomes frankly insane. A strange as this sounds, this reminds me of *"Apocalype Now"*.

Sean Connery and Michael Caine play a pair of razor-sharp scoundrels, scamming their way through an east Asian joyride during the twilight of the 19th century. On a thoroughly unpredictable adventure, the duo constantly converts lemons to lemonade as they meander from a publisher's office in India to a fictional holy land in the desert. There, intending to conquer a few villages and live the high life, the stakes suddenly spike as they find themselves anointed saviors, kings and (eventually) gods. Connery and Caine, good friends away from the screen, bubble with chemistry throughout. Their relationship is essential, and that obvious bond lifts an already-ambitious screenplay into something greater than the sum of its parts. When viewed with contemporary eyes, the pace is a little slow, akin to similar films of the era, but that deliberate tempo reaps unique rewards. By lingering in the atmosphere and dutifully setting the stage, director John Huston expertly depicts the vast cultural differences between our conniving, almost-modern Brits and the ancient ways of life still at play in turn-of-the-century Asia. A fine example of old-style filmmaking, loaded with snappy humor, surprising plot turns, high stakes and creeping peril.

Film about the British imperialist character.

D'antan comedy well written and well acted, but overly long and really needing generous cuts.