Konterr Brilliant and touching

Curapedi I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

TrueHello Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

Roman Sampson One of the most extraordinary films you will see this year. Take that as you want.

jacobs-greenwood Based on a Rudyard Kipling novel, this film boasts a red-headed Errol Flynn as Mahbub Ali, protector of the titled boy character, played by Dean Stockwell. Directed by Victor Saville, it tells the tale of how the orphan Kim helps the British fight rebels in India. The screenplay was co-written by Helen Deutsch. The cast includes Paul Lukas, Robert Douglas, Thomas Gomez, Cecil Kellaway, and Reginald Owen.Both the main characters dress themselves as natives of India, Flynn's because he's undercover and trying to infiltrate the rebel clan; Stockwell's to avoid school. Lukas plays a holy man that befriends Kim, and then works as his apprentice. When it is discovered that Kim is really a white boy, he is sent to a private school where his free and easy ways are punished. So, he escapes and catches up with Flynn's Red Beard, who trains the youngster in the spy trade. The two of them, with help from the holy man, work to aid the British during the time their kingdom included (occupying) India.

Edgar Allan Pooh . . . and Hogwarts (if all the young witches and warlocks were expelled), KIM looks back 65 years (from 1950) to a time when conflicts might be won (or prevented) by a tiny observation on the part of one spy, rather than by atomic bombs. "The Great Game" was the self-styled British "Empire's" term for all the messing around they did on other continents during the 1800s. Countries with a billion people today, such as India, would be better able to capture their fair share of Olympic medals and spots on Major League Baseball rosters if their cultures had not been tainted by the introduction of such Eurotrash pastimes as soccer, rugby, cricket, field hockey, Ping Pong, croquet, and badminton. Naturally, some right-thinking leaders of the indigenous tribes--particularly in Afghanistan--tried to team with their occasional Russian allies to resist being mentally decimated by cricket and badminton. Britain was willing to mount as many Light Brigade suicide charges as it took to cram cricket down the throats of those mountain men. If you strip away the gratuitous harem girls and hypnotists' tricks, that's the basic plot of KIM.

greens-10 A reviewer says that Kim is half Indian. That is not the case, he is wholly British.The ending of the Kipling's novel is ambiguous - does Kim go fully "native" and live an Indian spiritual life or does he become fully a Briton or does he continue moving to and fro in both worlds? The general feeling is that Kipling infers that he permanently becomes as an Indian. He remains a disciple of the Lama and continues on immersed in a spiritual life on the lama's death. There is a great opportunity for a sequel here, both as a novel and as a film.Generally the reviewers get it right. The movie is tedious and although much of the film was shot in India it fails to capture the excitement and action of India, especially when depicting life on the road, which is one of the most intriguing elements of the book.

xcelsiorus More swings than hits in this 1950 Hollywood "adaptation" of Kipling's masterpiece. Mahbub Ali may have been a perfect Flynn role, but making him the hero of the piece in place of Kim himself and Hurree Babu -- gratuitously killed off, as is the old lama Kim follows, loves and learns from -- leaves out the crisis of identity Kipling's Kim must face, the central theme of the book. Also missing are Kipling's picturesque vistas of the India he knew and recalled so well, scenes he paints with words easily surpassing all the Technicolor location shots. One who has read and appreciated the book on all of its many levels will also miss its many memorable and important "minor" characters; its sensitive and sympathetic treatment of Buddhism and other non-Christian creeds; and will be left wondering whether it was the star, the writers, the producer, the director or some combination of the above who thought they could go Kipling one better by, among other things, replacing his almost-accidental crisis with a Flynn-caused avalanche, then neatly tying all his lifelike loose ends into a big Tinseltown bow. Three stars because it's probably the best job they could have done with it at the time -- sad to say.