Like everyone else who loves movies, I have been waiting for a fourth Indiana Jones movie since The Last Crusade came out. They were fun romps and made every young boy want to seek out treasure. Time went on and on and everyone involved moved to other projects and I moved on. I moved on to smaller and darker movies. We tried to get our treasure hunting fix with the Mummy movies or those tedious National Treasure movies, but deep down we knew they weren't the same. We needed Indiana Jones. A few years ago The Powers that Be, started to look to revive the talk. And now the time is here. in 2008, 19 years later, Indiana Jones is back! We waited so long, but did all that waiting make it impossible for this movie not to disappoint?
Set in the post war 1950s, during the red scare, Indiana (Harrison Ford) has been kidnapped by Russians and brought to Area 51, a holding cell for Government and military secrets and he told to find a box. He knows what box and he finds it, but escapes in a thrilling opening scene. The FBI picks him up for helping KGB members and he is given a leave of absence from work due to it. He is going to go to Europe when a young man, Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) finds Indiana and tells him his old friend Oxley (John Hurt) is in trouble. Here we get all the exposition we could ever need about how a Crystal skull was stolen from an ancient Mayan temple and he who returns it will get all of the powers of the skulls. Indy and Mutt head off to Peru to search for the skull and along the way have an awesome motorcycle chase, fend off some luchador looking things shooting poison darts, and of course, some dead people. When Indy and Mutt find the skull they are captured by the Russians who reunite Indy with Marion Ravenwood, Indy's long lost love and Mutt's mother. Hmmmm. Indy, Marion, Mutt and Oxley escape in a very fun, if a bit over the top chase sequence and it is a race to the kingdom of the crystal skull!
This is not a perfect movie, but if you really go back and watch the original trilogy, you will find they are not perfect either. Movie fans have romanced those movies, but they are all flawed, over the top fun movies. This movie falls directly in line with the previous movies. The 50s brought a lot of alien movies and this movie homages to those, much like the originals were homaging 1930s serials. Speilberg knows what he is doing and while the influence of George Lucas is certainly there, with a little too much CGI, the movie works. It is fun to see Indy crack the whip while wearing the hat as we hear John Williams' Indy theme underneath it. Say what you will, but that is what we have been waiting for. Sure, the dialog is pretty weak and maybe the jokes do not cackle the way they once did, but this is about a hat, a whip, some music and Harrison Ford's ruggedly handsome face getting in and out of trouble. That is what we want from Indiana Jones. Shia adds a fun sense of youth to the movie and actually helps keep Ford on his toes. Indy needed a sidekick and why not make him a young man to show the generation gap and Indy is worlds tougher than Mutt, even though Mutt pretends to be tough. It adds a nice sense of fun to the whole movie. The opening sequence is classic Indy and the car chase is the perfect mix of thrilling, over the top fun and silliness.
Was it worth the wait? Sure it was. It made me think about selling all of my possessions and heading down to South America myself. It brought back all those feelings of treasure hunting and what more could I ask for? A lot of people will be thrown by the final act, but go back and watch Raiders or The last Crusade and tell me those were not bizarre endings. Cate Blanchett adds an element of sexiness to her villainous Russian leader. Her accent is perfect and her thirst for knowledge and power is right in line with Indy villains from the past. I have often said that when a big fun summer movie is entertaining enough to forgive plot holes, then it is a success because let's face it, all summer movies are ridiculous. When they can make you forget that, they have accomplished their goal. I strongly believe Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull accomplishes that.
Final Grade: B+
No comments:
Post a Comment