The Man Who Would Be King [Region 2] | ![The Man Who Would Be King [Region 2]](http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/515aOTc91YL._SL500_.jpg)
| Director: John Huston
Actors: Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Christopher Plummer, Saeed Jaffrey, Doghmi Larbi
Category: DVD
Buy Used: $49.98
as of 3/18/2010 18:05 EDT details
Seller: ZoverstocksUSA
Rating:  151 reviews
Sales Rank: 208908
Format: Anamorphic, NTSC
Languages: English (Original Language), Portuguese (Original Language), Arabic (Subtitled), Czech (Subtitled), Danish (Subtitled), Dutch (Subtitled), English (Subtitled), Finnish (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), German (Subtitled), Greek (Subtitled), Hebrew (Subtitled), Hindi (Subtitled), Hungarian (Subtitled), Italian (Subtitled), Norwegian (Subtitled), Polish (Subtitled), Portuguese (Subtitled), Spanish (Subtitled), Swedish (Subtitled), Turkish (Subtitled), French (Dubbed), German (Dubbed), Italian (Dubbed), Spanish (Dubbed)
Rating: PG (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Region: 2
Discs: 1
Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1
Running Time: 129 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.6
EAN: 5035822004030
ASIN: B00006JY3M
Theatrical Release Date: December 17, 1975
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
| |
| Similar Items:
| |
| Editorial Reviews:
Amazon.com essential video
A grandly entertaining, old-fashioned adventure based on the Rudyard Kipling short story, The Man Who Would Be King is the kind of rousing epic about which people said, even in 1975, "Wow! They don't make 'em like that anymore!" When director John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen) first started trying to make the film, with Gable and Bogart, the project was derailed by the latter's death. It was a few decades before Huston was able to finally realize his dream movie--and with an unimprovable cast. Sean Connery and Michael Caine are, respectively, Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnahan, a pair of lovably roguish British soldiers who set out to make their fortunes by conning the priests of remote Kafiristan into making them kings. It's a rollicking tale, an epic satire of imperialism, and the good-natured repartee shared by Caine and Connery is pure gold. In today's screen adventures, humor is usually imposed on the material by a writer or director trying to make some kind of cleverly self-aware comment ("Hey, we know it's a movie!"), but that sort of jokiness can create so much ironic distance that it pushes the audience right out of the picture. Huston lets the humor emerge naturally from the characters, for whom we wind up caring more deeply than we ever expected. --Jim Emerson
Amazon.com
A grandly entertaining, old-fashioned adventure based on the Rudyard Kipling short story, The Man Who Would Be King is the kind of rousing epic about which people said, even in 1975, "Wow! They don't make 'em like that anymore!" When director John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, The African Queen) first started trying to make the film, with Gable and Bogart, the project was derailed by the latter's death. It was a few decades before Huston was able to finally realize his dream movie--and with an unimprovable cast. Sean Connery and Michael Caine are, respectively, Daniel Dravot and Peachy Carnahan, a pair of lovably roguish British soldiers who set out to make their fortunes by conning the priests of remote Kafiristan into making them kings. It's a rollicking tale, an epic satire of imperialism, and the good-natured repartee shared by Caine and Connery is pure gold. In today's screen adventures, humor is usually imposed on the material by a writer or director trying to make some kind of cleverly self-aware comment ("Hey, we know it's a movie!"), but that sort of jokiness can create so much ironic distance that it pushes the audience right out of the picture. Huston lets the humor emerge naturally from the characters, for whom we wind up caring more deeply than we ever expected. --Jim Emerson
|
| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 151
 movie-classic/dvd-a joke February 24, 2010
John W. Engelbrecht (pa)
i remember seeing this movie in washington,D.C when i was a kid. i will never forget how amazing it was. now you can't find a good version of this film anywhere. now there is blu-ray..no "man who would be king". same old tired dvd with poor sound quality and weak visuals. please bring it back to the movie theatre or put it on blu-ray..thank you.
 Faulty DVD February 9, 2010
Carl M. Dozier (Chesapeake, VA)
I ordered this DVD and only got a part of it....it ended on Chapeter 21...what's up? It was disappointing not to get a full DVD of what I ordered; it had all types od trailers...
 The Man who Would be King February 6, 2010
W. Tappan Lum
A great story with the best cast imaginable. One of the great films by John Houston.
The danger of losing one's head: a cultural and psychological perspective January 21, 2010
Robert J. Rasmussen (Denver, Colorado)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
This review is in response to a one-star submittal on March 26, 2004. It contains SPOILERS, so you've been warned.
My major interest is cultural anthropology, and there is no civilization so cruel as to lack civility nor one so civil as to hide its own form of cruelty. Watch Scorsese's "The Age of Innocence" as a case in point. However, that's not the focus of this film; to make it so reveals a literal-mindedness that can only be acquired in today's "liberal" universities who turn out lock-step politically-correctniks and not critical, discriminating thinkers -- the essence of eduction.
Since this is Kipling and not Conrad, I doubt the author was out to demonstrate the subtle and sometimes destructive changes technologically advanced societies visit upon native cultures. Here it's not the native culture that's fatefully affected but Peechy and Danny. "The Man Who Would Be King" is a tale of the inevitable misunderstanding when cultures clash, but also a tragic example of losing one's perspective in a foreign land. This same phenomena was exquisitely filmed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger in "Black Narcissus," complete with an insecure neurotic who goes murderously native.
From the very beginning, Peechy (Michael Caine) and Danny (Sean Connery) are driven by a need found in all cultures and universal to all peoples: social status, something neither possess in India. The two have seen the sacrifice and bloodshed of war and now refuse the undignified job of holding doors open for blowzy women. As Kipling wrote, "It's Tommy this, an' Tommy that, an' 'Chuck him out, the brute!' But it's 'Saviour of 'is country' when the guns begin to shoot." So off to Kafiristan they go for adventure and the possibility of regaining their status by acquiring material treasures -- always highly valued in the West.
Peechy never looses sight of the material treasures, but Danny is cursed. He takes an arrow in battle and survives -- a sure sign he's a God, the God Alexander, to the Kafiristan elders. Ah, to become a God; it's irresistible and apparently less self-serving than Peechy's more practical wants.
At first Danny is a magnanimous God, a King helping to unite Kafiristan and act with Solomon-like wisdom in addressing the problems of "his people." But just as surely as in Acton's England, power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And what is corrupted? Danny's assessment -- nay, irrational belief -- in his own powers. And what will it mean? The inevitably violent reaction of a tribal people to foreigners breaking a deadly serious cultural taboo and exposing themselves as mere mortals.
Danny's talisman, the arrow that made him a God and which he now wields like a scepter, fails him when he attempts to take Roxanne for his wife. Tragically, Danny has betrayed his oath to swear off women during this journey besieged with ironies. Certainly, Gods make their own rules, but even They are at the mercy of nature and the power of culture, which have the final say as they always do, so poor Danny falls from grace like a "penny whirligig" into the bowels of the earth.
Only if Danny would have been more practical like Peechy, but Danny wouldn't settle for base treasures; in reaching higher he deserves a spectacular and curiously noble end. And Peechy? He's destined to wander the earth alone, a man with an unbelievable story and a peculiar wisdom few can appreciate. An out-of-focus still frame of Danny's crowned skull punctuated by Jarre's highly effective score with echos of "The Minstrel Boy" make for a wonderfully melancholy finish to a first rate film.
To call this a satire is a disservice to Rudyard Kipling and John Huston, one of the finest and most American of directors. From a cultural and psychological perspective, this is a further examination of man's unquenchable need for social status that Huston began with "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre," itself a brilliant adaption of Chaucer's "A Pardoner's Tale."
Within American culture, status is synonymous with the acquisition of gold, silver, money with its Masonic symbols -- you choose the means -- and is sadly dismissed as greed. However, greed is an inadequate word to capture the flush of emotions and elevation of status that accompanies such ownership. For their possessor, these materials have a mystical quality and a dangerous one; it's what makes the end of "Sierra Madre" so effective as nature reclaims its own and leaves few survivors free of this mysterious substance, this oro diablo. Come to think of it, Huston covered similar ground in his incomparable "The Maltese Falcon."
The late John Huston was a great auteur of the American (and British) way, without the typical black and white judgments we've come to expect from lesser talents.
A Crowning Achievement November 7, 2009
TastyBabySyndrome ("Daddy Dagon's Daycare" - Proud Sponsor of the Little Tendril Baseball Team, USA)
Hoping for riches beyond belief, two British officers set off into the blank spots on the map with only a few crates of guns and the willpower to become more. They have a plan, too, and it involves creating a powerbase that will make them rich beyond their meager means. When they find themselves surrounded by gold and thought to be the rightful heirs of alexander the Great's riches, however, the two find themselves caught in a golden web that promises to either make them god-men or make them deadmen. All because of the masonic symbol, a nice little arrow, and the color of their skin.
While many movies boast of having a powerful cast and a great script, this movie really does have both. It begins with two powerful actors that want to be more than common soldiers, and so they tempt fate and cross over some horrific terrain. When they get to wherever they are going, they show the people rifles, begin setting up camp, and find themsleves getting more material gains. Then they hear of a temple on top of a sacred mountain and decide that they should go there and see what they can get from the seemingly peaceful people that stand guard over a mountain of gold and gems. The real power is not in the gold and jewels, however, but is instead hinged around the the acting prowess of our two main characters. One begins to believe himself a god and the other begins to wonder why they don't take the loot and split. Add to that woman problems - or obsession and the want to have it all - and you have yourself a tale that has stuck with me since i was a little kid. It has left my side as Christmas presents, as birthday gifts, and as other forms of tribute to get people to never forget it, either. and that is because it is a classic, and the story it tells rivals many of the things that people hold in the highest regard.
If you have never heard of the movie, you need to drop everything and order it now. you will feel reward right away, and you will thank yourself for listing to the cash that wanted you to spend it. If you have heard of it but have not seen it in a long time, watch it again and see it in a different light. Every few years I notice something different here, something I thought I had a grasp on, and that is enough to convince me to say that is worthy of keeping around forever. An army of people agree with this accessment, too, with the movie finding itself voted into the Top 20 movies of all time by lists like TMC, many guidebooks, people that really do not matter, and so on. The one person that does matter is you, though, and seeing this will make you rememeber what it was like to watch a movie that was bigger than life and that made you wonder if the characters could hold the cards in check or if they would see their kingdom come crashing to dust.
I cannot profess enough elation at having been given this movie when I was younger. Buy it and know that some things are worth stepping back decades for.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 151
|
|
|
