The Man Who Would Be King

Huston had the biggest popular success of his late career with this rip-roaring adventure story, which paired Sean Connery and Michael Caine as two raffish decommissioned British military men set on making their way to a far-flung Middle Eastern province and convincing the natives to treat them as gods. They succeed, of course, at which point the movie—both lovingly channeling and deviously winking at the Rudyard Kipling novella on which it’s based—transforms into a giddy parody of British imperialism. Christopher Plummer is on hand to give a spot-on young Kipling impression in the opening and closing scenes.