How sad is this?

Good movie, but best of all time? Hardly . . .

It's entirely possible that sending the audience out feeling lousy was intentional

The first must-see film of the year.

I'd watched this picture in 1985 on television once...until march 2017 when the DVD come out and l couldn't believe...for many years l've been looking for this movie and more this release have a dubbed version...the movie is an vehicle to Dean Stockwell in this time Errol Flynn was already running down the hill but it's an enjoyable movie adapted from Rudyard Kliping's novel about the boy who living as native Indian but actually was son of English officer that helped a man called Red Beard and finding a Lama who is looking for a river...interesting as entertainment and adventure!!!

The film is named after a young boy (Dean Stockwell) in India who is an orphan and who has learned to use his wits to survive. He also knows that his father was in the Colonial Army and because of that, the lad has an affinity for working with his British overlords. And so, the boy becomes a spy for the British Army and eventually does his part to continue the British subjugation of the Indians. Well, that's not QUITE how Rudyard Kipling and the filmmakers saw it, but in essence it's a film advocating colonialism. All the anti-colonialists are bad in the film and the occupying forces (the Brits and their Indian allies) are good."Kim" is a fun and enjoyable story even if it promoted an over-idealized view of the British in India. HOWEVER, it's also incredibly stupid. While I could see that the 'Indians' in the film were about as Indian as a cannoli, my uncle happened to be visiting and he was REALLY put off by the film. After all, he'd spent some time in India and said that the film was nothing but a long series of silly clichés--and was like a film made by someone who knew next to nothing about the country. And, with white folks painted up to look like Indians, it's even more profoundly silly. I think if they remade the film with an actual Indian cast (when appropriate), the film could really work. Imagine...Errol Flynn as a red-bearded Indian!!! And, the Hungarian actor, Paul Lukas, as an Indian lama!! Uggh!

During the first half of the twentieth century, many Americans loudly proclaimed their opposition to European colonialism, rather hypocritically given that the United States would not have existed without the colonisation by Europeans of the North American continent; all that happened in 1776 was that control of that process passed from the mother country to the settlers themselves. The American cinema, however, often took a sympathetic view of the European colonial empires, particularly the British one. " Kim" is a good example; although it was made in 1950, three years after Indian independence, it nevertheless reflects the nineteenth-century British view that the Raj was a Jolly Good Thing.The film has been described as a "Boy's Own" adventure story. ("The Boy's Own Paper" was a British boys comic noted for its adventure stories, often with a distinct patriotic bias). It is set in British-ruled India during the 1880s. The title character is Kim O'Hara, the orphaned son of a British soldier, who becomes involved with the British intelligence service as they try to frustrate the attempts of Russian agents to foment rebellion amongst the frontier tribes. (No doubt in the early days of the Cold War American audiences would have been receptive to any story featuring Russian villains, even if the action took place during Tsarist times). In the course of his adventures Kim befriends Mahbub Ali, a Lahore horse trader, and a Tibetan lama whose disciple he becomes.Visually, the film is attractive; no expense seems to have been spared, as much of the action was shot on location in India. (Many films of this period got no closer to the country where they are ostensibly set than a Hollywood backlot). It does, however suffer from two major flaws. The first is miscasting. Young Dean Stockwell as Kim plays his part well enough, if one can overlook his American accent, but receives little support from the other leads, especially Errol Flynn as Mahbub Ali.By the early fifties Flynn's career was in decline. He had suffered from various health problems, including alcoholism, and no longer possessed the charisma and athleticism which had first made him a big star in the late thirties and early forties. He was, however, still regarded as a big name, and was presumably cast in this film on that basis, but makes little effort. This must be one of his laziest performances; he didn't even telephone it in but posted it by second-class mail. To make matters worse, he is totally unconvincing as an Indian, and receives no help from the makeup department in this regard. Mahbub seems so European that I kept expecting him to be unmasked as an Englishman in disguise, something which never happens. Although it transpires that Mahbub is working for British Intelligence, we are supposed to accept that he is a genuine native of Lahore.The film's second major flaw is that it never manages to integrate its religious themes with the main story. I have never read Kipling's novel, so cannot say if his mixture of mysticism and adventure works well on the printed page, but it certainly does not succeed on the cinema screen. The scenes with the lama seem like a distraction from the main action. It doesn't help matters that the Hungarian-born actor Paul Lukas is no more redolent of the mysterious East than is Errol Flynn. His lama dresses like a Catholic cardinal and in his bearing recalls a mild-mannered Anglican clergyman. Overall, "Kim" is one of those fifties adventure films which have not aged well and which retain little interest today. 5/10

By 1950 Hollywood gave Dean Stockwell a lead role in a Rudyard Kipling story. Stockwell was a young teenager and after such films as "Gentleman's Agreement," and "Keys of the Kingdom," he deserved far better.The picture was a slow pacing film about a boy spying for the English, who anticipate a Russian invasion of India in the late 1800s.Stockwell is really Caucasian but pretends to be Indian so that he can avoid school. Orphaned, he is soon captured and made to go to school but during summer recess, it's time for espionage.Errol Flynn plays a horse trader in this nonsense who also works for British intelligence. Paul Lukas is a religious leader who walks away at the end. He must have thought that he was Moses.The Indian women in this mess talk like they're reading the script for the first time. An exciting part is when Thomas Gomez is thrown off a cliff. This is what should have been done to the writing.This film is living proof that pictures with star quality will fail when the writing is bad.