The Man Who Would Be King (film)
The Man Who Would Be King is a 1975 Technicolor film adapted from the Rudyard Kipling novella of the same title. It was adapted and directed by John Huston and starred Sean Connery, Michael Caine, Saeed Jaffrey, and Christopher Plummer as Kipling giving a name to the novellas anonymous narrator. The film follows two rogue exnoncommissioned officers of the Indian Army who set off from late 19thcentury British India in search of adventure and end up as kings of Kafiristan.
Three years earlier. Dravot and Carnehan had met Kipling under less than auspicious circumstances Carnehan, a former Colour sergeant of the Queens Own Royal Loyal Light Infantry, pickpocketed Kiplingss pocketwatch but was forced to return it as he was a fellow Freemason. Carnehan claims to be an expert in whiskey, women, waistcoats and bills of fare. Both Dravot and Carnehan are in the process of blackmailing a local Rajah by posing as newspaper correspondents of The Northern Star newspaperwhich outrages the real correspondent Kipling. In order to save their lives Kipling has the local district commissioner detain both Dravot and Carnehan who obliquely blackmail the commissioner himself. Despite being accomplished gun smugglers, swindlers, fencers of stolen goods, conmen, and blackmailers, both of them are bitter that after fighting to make India part of the Empire, they will have little to return home to except deadend jobs. Both Dravot and Carnehan turn up at Kiplings officeand explain their biggest gamble yet feeling that India is too small for men such as themselves, they intend to travel to Kafiristan, help a local king overcome his enemies, overthrow him, and become godsrulers themselves before stealing various riches and returning to England in triumph. After signing a contract pledging mutual loyalty and forswearing drink and women until they achieved their grandiose aims, Peachy and Danny along with twenty Martini Henry rifles set off on an epic overland journey north beyond the Khyber Pass not before Kipling, after attempting to dissuade the men gives Dravot his masonic emblem as a token of brotherhood. Fighting off bandits, blizzards, and avalanches, they make their way into the unknown land of Kafiristan literally Land of the Infidels.They chance upon a Gurkha soldier who goes by the name Billy Fish Saeed Jaffrey, the sole survivor of a missing mapping expedition sent several years earlier which had been lost in an avalanche. Billy speaks English as we
Source: Wikipedia
