Pretty-boy George Chakiris wisely keeps his shirt on opposite a buffed up Yul Brynner on whose form Joseph MacDonald's camera dwells with unadorned admiration. Had he paid similar attention to the insipid love interest Shirley Anne Field, people would complain about the sexual objectification of women, but Brynner seems to enjoy all the attention. J. Lee Thompson keeps the action moving along and the story entertaining, even though it is all highly predictable, and Richard Basehart looks suitably embarassed to be seen in an assortment of silly headgear and hairdos.

I did not see this film when it was originally released. I was 12 then, but for some reason I was not attracted to it. So today, when I have finally seen it, I am not moved by nostalgia, as it often happens to me when I revisit films from my youth. This one is truly a poor motion picture, for all the reasons some reviewers have indicated: awful script and dialogs, inaccuracy of several sorts, corny costumes and settings, unbelievable hair styles, Caucasian actors playing natives of the American continent, and very bad acting, especially from Yul Brynner who overdid the macho number he created for the King of Siam, posing as if he were doing a photo shoot for "Tomorrow's Man" or any other male physique magazine of the 1960s… Today it seems worse, with everybody speaking the same language (English), but with different USA accents, except Shirley Anne Field who did her best British phrasing. As for the score, once Elmer Bernstein complained in a letter he wrote me (he is the only composer I have ever exchanged correspondence with) that he had not convinced any record company to issue "Kings of the Sun", one of his favorite film scores. If heard apart from the visuals, I am sure it works, but to most ears quite probably it sounds as the score for a western or biblical film. As it is, it sounds strange adding musical comments to images that pretend to convey life in America the continent, before the arrival of the European conquistadors… Bernstein was not all that wrong, in any case, for scriptwriter James R. Webb worked on this one just after "How the West Was Won" and before "Cheyenne Autumn", maybe taking it for another western without horses.

Kings Of The Sun maybe one of the very few films ever done about Pre- Columbian America that will not have a single member of the Eastern Hemisphere in it. It's curious the vision that we white folk bring to such an enterprise.

One thing is certain and it's universally certain. The native populace of this hemisphere had its wars and rivalries way before Christopher Columbus, John Cabot or any of their contemporaries ever set a foot in what became North and South America. And romantic rivalries happen every place on the globe.

Such a rivalry occurs in Kings Of The Sun where young king George Chakiris leads some of his key people and commandeers a whole tribe more of them because they have the votes to leave the Yucatan area and go miles up the coast. He's got reason to flee, a really nasty and vicious warrior king played by Leo Gordon has learned the use of metal and he's making weapons of mass destruction. Don't kid yourself in those times, the guy who invented that was on top in either hemisphere. Bearing that in mind, Chakiris flees to fight another day.

The new hybrid tribe sets up further along the coast and they meet up with Yul Brynner's tribe. They look more like American Indians than the Chakiris crowd of Mayans do. I'm not sure how much farther up the coast of the Gulf of Mexico they went and I think the writers left it purposely vague.

Chakiris had to make a bargain that he would marry the chief of the other tribe's daughter in order to put his fleet in operation. She's played by the fetching Shirley Anne Field and Brynner's got the hots for her also. That threatens to rip up a new friendship, especially when Leo Gordon and his crowd comes a calling.

Though Kings Of The Sun is an impressive looking film and the players all perform well, I've a feeling it was intended to be far more ambitious than what eventually came out. Certainly people who are more versed Pre-Columbian native cultures could make a far better comment on the authenticity of it.