Movie · 1975 · Action, Adventure, Drama, History · 1h 59m · PG · English
Curator score: 4.3/10 (16K ratings)
Between the wind and the lion is the woman. For her, half the world may go to war.
Overview
At the beginning of the 20th century an American woman is abducted in Morocco by Berbers, and the attempts to free her range from diplomatic pressure to military intervention.
Ratings
Curator score: 4.3/10
IMDb: 6.8/10
Letterboxd: 3.38/5
Rotten Tomatoes: 63%
Metacritic: 67
TMDB: 6.5/10
Director
John Milius
Production
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
Cast
Sean Connery, Candice Bergen, Brian Keith, John Huston, Geoffrey Lewis, Steve Kanaly, Vladek Sheybal, Nadim Sawalha, Roy Jenson, Deborah Baxter, Jack Cooley, Chris Aller, Simon Harrison, Polly Gottesman, Antoine Saint-John, Aldo Sambrell, Luis Barboo, Darrell Fetty, Marc Zuber, Billy Williams
Curator Review
Verdict
A big, old-school adventure with rousing action, imperial politics, and a knowingly swaggering tone. It’s often thrilling and visually grand, but its romanticized worldview, uneven satire, and dated casting choices make it a more complicated watch today.
Best for
viewers who like sweeping historical adventure
fans of practical action and large-scale set pieces
people interested in John Milius’s macho, mythic storytelling
audiences who enjoy politically charged pulp epics
Skip if
you want a modern, historically sensitive perspective
you’re put off by colonial-era adventure fantasies
you dislike broad tonal shifts between drama, comedy, and spectacle
you can’t get past dated casting and accent work
Overview
The Wind and the Lion is the kind of 1970s studio adventure that feels both grandly old-fashioned and a little unhinged. John Milius turns a real diplomatic incident into a mythic clash of empires, with horses, raids, speeches, and Jerry Goldsmith’s score doing a lot of the heavy lifting. When it’s working, it has the sweep of a lost matinee epic and the confidence of a movie that wants to be taken as legend rather than history.
Worth noting
What makes it interesting now is also what makes it divisive. The film is full of swaggering romanticism, but it’s also steeped in imperial fantasy and era-specific assumptions that can be hard to ignore. Sean Connery’s casting remains a glaring distraction, even if the movie around him is often more playful and self-aware than its reputation suggests.
Bottom line
If you’re open to a pulpy, politically charged adventure with real craft behind the spectacle, it has plenty to offer. If you want nuance over mythmaking, or a cleaner moral frame, it’s likely to feel more like a relic than a rediscovery.
Top Letterboxd reviews
Jonah Desneaux · 142 likes
My dad has been sick for a few months and the end has come a lot sooner than we were expecting. Watching movies has always been an important part of our relationship and I owe the love I have for them to him.
We just finished watching our last movie together. The Wind and The Lion is his favorite and since childhood I promised I would watch it with him one day. I am so very grateful that today was that day and for all the other magical movie moments we shared through the years.
Sean Baker · 125 likes
Can't believe I never saw this John Milius film. Unfortunately it hasn't aged wonderfully especially with Connery playing a Moroccan sharif with a Scottish accent. Impressive practical action though.
Watched the Warner Archive Collection Blu-ray which has commentary by Milius which I'm sure will be more entertaining than the film.
Filipe Furtado (4.5★) · 72 likes
The sweep suggests Lean which would make this very old-fashioned adventure film a decade behind the curve, but most of it seems to come straight from a 20s/30s exotic adventure right down to being structured around a duet between Sean Connery Berber warrior and Candice Bergen American woman. The scenery is great, Jerry Goldsmith score is one of the best of its kind, and the movie is full of rhetorical talk and political maneuvering, bookended by two great raid scenes.… more The sweep suggests Lean which would make this very old-fashioned adventure film a decade behind the curve, but most of it seems to come straight from a 20s/30s exotic adventure right down to being structured around a duet between Sean Connery Berber warrior and Candice Bergen American woman. The scenery is great, Jerry Goldsmith score is one of the best of its kind, and the movie is full of rhetorical talk and political maneuvering, bookended by two great raid scenes.… more
harrylime66 (4★) · 65 likes
If the whole lies in the particulars, the first ten minutes of “The Wind and the Lion” not only summarise the whole film, but also represent John Milius’ whole aesthetic and existential philosophy: waves crashing and foaming on the shore… horses running… the euphoria of plundering and fighting… the European elegance that is destroyed while a bottle of Bordeaux pours out its precious contents as if it were blood… the noble rebel and the blonde lady.
Set in Morocco in… more If the whole lies in the particulars, the first ten minutes of “The Wind and the Lion” not only summarise the whole film, but also represent John Milius’ whole aesthetic and existential philosophy: waves crashing and foaming on the shore… horses running… the euphoria of plundering and fighting… the European elegance that is destroyed while a bottle of Bordeaux pours out its precious contents as if it were blood… the noble rebel and the blonde lady.
Set in Morocco in… more
comrade_yui (5★) · 53 likes
politics is jihad by other means; two cultures passing each other through volleys of violence -- the barbary pirate, romantic rogue of another age, nomad-terrorist of this one, and the cowboy president, forged in the fires of empire, eager to wave his big stick of foreign intervention. a boy's pulp adventure story told with the hazy irony of adulthood, the last time that chivalry rode the dunes and hunted bears. a question persists even amidst the clamor of history -- is there one thing in your life worth losing everything for?
1966 · History, War, Adventure · 2h 14m · Curator 4.0/10 (12.6K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, fuboTV, MGM Plus, Philo, Amazon Prime Video with Ads
Another old-school colonial-era epic that turns military conflict into pageantry and political theater.
1964 · Action, Drama, History · 2h 18m · NR · Curator 8.6/10 (46.3K ratings) · Where to watch: Amazon Prime Video, FlixFling, Amazon Prime Video with Ads, Troma NOW
A classic of military spectacle and colonial conflict with strong sense of place and tension.