Christopher Plummer (The Man Who Would be KIng) 5

Plummer has played many great parts and appeared in many fine movies. The journalist profession is a key to this story.


John Huston adapted a Kipling short story into a feature film starring Sean Connery as Daniel Dravot, Michael Caine as Peachey Carnehan, and Christopher Plummer as Rudyard Kipling. Now what could be better in an old fashioned adventure yarn?

While at the offices of the Northern Star newspaper, his newspaper, Rudyard Kipling (Plummer) is approached by a ragged, seemingly crazed derelict, who reveals himself to be his old acquaintance, Peachy Carnahan (Caine). Peachy tells Kipling the story of how he and his cohort, Danny Dravot, (Connery), traveled to remote Kafiristan, become gods, and ultimately lost everything.

The adventure starts this way. After meeting Kipling at his newspaper office a few years earlier and signing a contract pledging mutual loyalty, Carnahan and Dravot muster an army from the natives of a Kafiristan village. In their first battle, the natives decide that Daniel is a god after he is shot with an arrow in the chest but continues fighting. In fact, the arrow has struck a bandolier beneath his clothing and become lodged in it, but the natives don't know this.

When they arrive in the holy city of Sikandergul, the natives confuse Dravot's Masonic medal for the symbol of Alexander the Great and declare the men to be gods.

Danny has delusions of grandeur, while Peachy wants to sneak out of the city with chests of gold and jewels. Danny decides to take a wife from amongst the natives, much against Peachy's advice. Danny chooses Roxanna (played by Michael Caine's real-life wife Shakira). Roxanna fears no woman can live if she consorts with a god, and so tries to escape from Daniel, biting him in the process. The bite draws blood, and when the natives see it they realise Daniel is human after all, and pursue him and Peachy through the streets.

Danny is killed when forced to walk to the middle of a rope bridge over a deep canyon. The ropes supporting it are cut and he falls to his death. Peachy is tortured and released.

At the end of the film, as Peachy finishes his story, he presents Kipling with Danny's mummified head, still wearing its Kafiri crown!