Release Date: May 22, 2008 Studio: Paramount Pictures MPAA Rating: PG-13 Genre: Action •
Scifi •
Comedy Director: Steven Spielberg Writers: David Koepp, George Lucas, Jeff Nathanson, Philip Kaufman Cast: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent Synopsis: Whip-wielding archeologist Indiana Jones embarks on a world-wide quest to unravel the mystery of the Crystal Skull in the late 1950s. Joined by juvie delinquent Mutt and his former girlfriend Marion Ravenwood, Indy must fight Russian communists, American FBI agents and creepy critters, with a bunch of booby-trapped temples and a plethora of perils along the way to uncover the secret behind mysterious artifacts known as the Crystal Skulls. The Review: **SPOILERS.WHY DID HAVE TO BE SPOILERS?
COME ON. GROW A LITTLE BACKBONE, WILL YA?**
"Grab your [leather] coat and get your hat [and whip]/
Leave your worries on the doorstep/
Just direct your feet/
To the [Multiplex] side of the street"*
It’s been 19 years since intrepid archeologist/adventurer INDIANA JONES galloped away from movie screens in INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE and INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL takes place in 1957, 21 years after the events of Indy’s first move RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK.
Beginning with the vintage painted Paramount Pictures logo that the previous flicks opened with, IJATKOTCS opens in New Mexico as Elvis Presley’s “Hound Dog” plays over the credits.
Yes, it seems this isn’t (for many of you) your daddy’s Indiana Jones.
But, when Harrison Ford picks up his trademark brown fedora and steps into a ring of soldiers with rifles, his back straight and his head held high, you'll find a big smile has materialized on your face, because goddamnit, INDIANA JONES is back.
Sure, Harrison Ford was 64 last year when he made this movie , but he looks great. He may have a more lines in his face (thank goodness the actor has been smart enough not to ruin his face with botox or plastic surgery) but "the years not the mileage" have given him a deserved well-worn countenance, like a beloved baseball mitt.
We (eventually) get to hear a few snippets of what the good doctor has been up to since we last saw him, but first, he has to meet IRINA SPALKO (Cate Blanchett)-a ruskie uberbabe sporting a severely lovely Louise Brooks haircut and her comrades in arms.
They've kidnapped Indy and GEORGE ‘MAC” McHALE (Ray Winstone), his companion from many of Indy's unseen adventures and taken them to Area 51. As the massive doors open into a humongous warehouse, the camera pulls back to reveal crates stacked upon crates and we realize: Oh cool, this is the warehouse from the end of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK!
Irina needs Indy's help in locating one of the kajillion crates-the proverbial needle in the US government's dumping ground of a haystack.
He ingeniously helps her, against his better judgment (you'd find your judgment was impaired too, if you had twenty-seven Russian rifles pointed at you), but since this is Indiana Jones, he makes his escape, and a fantastic indoor chase scene erupts. Here we see that Indiana's not the man he used to be, but man, he still can maneuver his way through the stacks and the ceiling rafters like nobody else would even try.
Following his rocket-powered escape from his commie captors, Indiana escapes a possibly horrific (and time and place appropriate) suburban death trap, using a comically brilliant and unbelievably believable device that, once again, only Indiana Jones can pull off.
In the scenes following we meet a few FBI goons as the Red Scare subplot kicks in . Look closely and you'll recognize Neil Flynn (Janitor from TV's "Scrubs") hiding behind a pair of horn-rimmed glasses. Remember that back in the good old Cold War days of 1957, the communists were perceived to be a very real menace to truth, justice and the American Way. It’s here that we're teased with some of Indy's exploits between 1938 (LAST CRUSADE) and today. As I sat in the dark'ed movie theater, I felt a sense of loss that I never got to see those stories. Oh well-that's Hollywood (or Lucasfilm) for you.
I'm going to skip over some plot points here, but we move to Marshall College (where Prof. Jones teaches Archeology to still-packed classrooms. Here we see a quick shot of a painting in the University's hallways of MARCUS BRODY, Indy's friend from RAIDERS and LAST CRUSADE , who was played by Denholm Elliot. Elliot passed away in 1992 and it's a sweet touch to include his character in the film this way. Sean Connery makes an appearance as Indy’s Dad Henry Jones Sr. as a photograph on his desk. The scuttlebutt is that Sir Connery didn’t want to do INDY 4, so I think Jim Broadbent’s DEAN STANFORTH character takes the father-figure reins for this ones.
Introduced sporting a Brando-esque (circa THE WILD ONES) leather jacket and cap and a gigantic pompadour, MUTT WILLIAMS (Shia LeBeouf) quickly jumps into the ever widening plot as his exposition-spouting introduction turns into a soda parlor fight and another big exhilarating chase sequence featuring Mutt's motorcycle VS.. the KGB. Mutt and Indiana careen through the roads, campus commons, buildings, halls and interiors of Marshall College (listen for the Wilhelm scream in the library).
It's here that things begin to get a little convoluted.
Indy and Mutt go to Peru to find Mutt's father figure PROFESSOR "OX" OXLEY (John Hurt) who stays off-camera for quite a while longer. The two leather-jacketed gents make their way through the underbelly of the little town in Peru. Pay attention when Indy tells Mutt he speaks Quechcua-it's a nod to RAIDERS, as Indy's porters (including future Doc Ock, Alfred Molina himself) , were Quechcua Indianas.
Trivia buffs also might want to know (in case it ever comes up) that the temple in RAIDERS belonged to the Chachapoyan Warriors.
Like I said, things start to get convoluted.
David(JURASSIC PARK/PANIC ROOM) Koepp's plot and script seem to have been assembled at a Screenwriting Salad Bar.
I’m not complaining: I was highly entertained, but, in one movie we got: The Red Scare , Area 51, Stalin’s ESP obsession, Atomic Testing , FBI paranoia, Peruvian Crystal Skull Mythology, the Nazca Lines, Aliens,Indy and Mutt’s story, Indy and Marion’s story, Indy and Mac’s story, the odd adventures of Professor “Ox” Oxley, and Irina Spalko and her band of merry comrades.
IJATKOTCS 's MacGuffin (a term coined by Alfred Hitchcock to describe the thing in a story that all the characters are chasing after i.e the plans to the Death Star in STAR WARS) is as convoluted as the title.
Unlike RAIDERS' Lost Ark or THE LAST CRUSADE's holy grail, the titular Skull and Kingdom would take a paragraph or two for me to fully elaborate what the hell all the fuss is about and even then you, good reader, might still be scratching your head. The ending is also a head-scratcher .Methinks the filmmakers never quite could come to an agreement over what exactly they wanted the ending to be .
But, when you're watching the movie-non of this matters. INDIANA JONES AND THE YADDA YADDA OF THE YADDA YADDA YADDA is a blast and you really won't mind it all really doesn't make a whole heckuvalot of sense as you're watching it.
Back to the story, it's somewhere in here that we are reunited with the brainy commie beauty Irina Spalko , Indy's pal Mac, meet the mad Professor Oxley and MARION RAVENWOOD, Indy's girlfriend from RAIDERS shows up with a smile.
It's GREAT to see Marion(the irrepressibly spunky and still cute-as-hell Karen Allen) back in Indiana's life and back on the movie screen. Thank goodness it wasn’t whiney wet blanket Willie Scott (but Kate Capshaw and Steven Spielberg's beautiful daughter is in a brief but memorable one second role as "Slugger"-you'll recognize her by her wicked right hook-really!) Ford's and Allen's chemistry is lots of fun and when you see their quicksand scene in IJATKOTCS , you'll completely understand why Marion and Indy belong together.
(On yet another side note, as I was preparing this review and trying to find the right terminology for the above referenced quicksand, I discovered, thanks to the magic of Google.com, that there are quicksand and mud fetish sites. I don’t know whether to laugh or to cry here.)
Lucas and company don’t let the plot get in the way of the story, and yes, it's time for another action scene.
INDIANA JONES' set pieces are spectacular: the chase in the jungle here goes above and beyond your expectations and keeps exponentially topping itself as the scene turns a (relatively)simple game of "hot potato" into a swashbuckling game of switch-the-cars that's topped with Mutt learning that sometimes, as Johnny Weissmuller proved, you ain't got a thing if you ain't got that swing, and as Mrs. Potatohead said in TOY STORY 2, you can never have too many monkeys.
Indy’s gotten himself into a slug-fest with Spalko's glumly one-dimensional lunk lDOVCHENKO (the really big Igor Jijikine) . The brawl is chin music at it’s finest, but not wanting anything to be easy for Indy, here that Spielberg and Uncle George unleash one more thing Indy has to deal with..
Is it time for the things that make you go “ewwww” ? Of course, and as any Indy flick wouldn't be complete without some something to make your skin crawl-so after snakes, giant bugs and vampire bats, and rats, what's next?
This time, a massive ravenous horde of some creepy crawlies that enjoy "the other other white meat"-y'know, human flesh descend upon on our heroes. I'm not gonna tell you what they are. You'll have to find out for yourself.
Oh, and on a related note-if you are scared of Prairie Dogs-stay the hell away from this movie and don't say I didn't warn ya.
Indy and Co. (Marion,Mutt,Mac,Ox) finally make it to the Kingdom of The Crystal Skull and following a run-in with extras from Darren Aronosfky’s THE FOUNTAIN, they make it into the film’s special effects heavy big finish.
Of course, Irina shows up and she comes to the kind of bad ending you’ve come to expect of any of the heavies in the INDIANA JONES movies. The funny thing about her demise, was, well, I empathized with what she wanted.
I’m not gonna say what it is, but I think many geeks of many stripes out there will agree with me on this one.
Maybe on repeat viewings of IJATKOTCS (which I know I’ll be enjoying for years to come with my family) the really big finish will make more sense. Methinks the filmmakers never quite could come to an agreement over what exactly they wanted the ending to be . But, on first sight, uhh…I don’t really get it. It’s really pretty and really cool and better looking and better sounding than your standard NATIONAL TREASURE /TOMB RAIDER/crappola movie that wouldn’t be around if it weren’t for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK .
My expectations going into this film were very very high and I ‘m very happy (although still a bit confused). I would’ve liked to have seen Short Round from TEMPLE OF DOOM (who I imagine now is a professor at Marshall College) and Sallah from RAIDERS and LAST CRUSADE, but the Mutt, Marion and Indiana story thoroughly cured my jonesing (sorry- I had to get that phrase in somewhere) for a resolution of previous INDY plotline.
I do have a few quibbles. Along with some 1957 era LED lights that seemed pretty anachronistic, there was a tracking device about the size of your thumb shown, that, based on 1957’s technology might actually be the size of a large thermos. INDIANA JONES also suffers from a few rough edits. Aside from all of that, INDY 4 features great direction from Big Steve, a rousing John Williams score (including Marion’s theme-yaay) and some great cinematography by frequent Spielberg collaborator Janusz KamiDsk who puts away his box of crayons and mimics the excellent work of the previous cinematographer for the Indy films, Douglas Slocombe.
The film’s last scene is an old-fashioned kind of happy ending, the kind you might find in a 1950’s film. I was reminded of the end of MUPPETS TAKE MANHATTAN, so if you remember how that movie ended (and you liked it), then you’ll really love how INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL concludes. I know I did.
So, stop reading this review and get in line for INDIANA JONES now! You’ll have 124 minutes of fantastic fun !
Save a place in line for me . Before I join you, I’ve gotta get me the John Williams soundtrack , my wife a Shia LeBeouf action figure and a Taters of the Lost Ark Mr. Potato head for my son Indiana (but he’s another story).
*Free adaptation of "On the Sunny Side of the Street" music by Jimmy McHugh with lyrics by Dorthy Fields. All rights reserved. Rating:
