FILM REVIEW – INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL
Fourth in the Indiana film series, twenty years on from The Last Crusade, and wisely fully acknowledging that the hero is now older, though Ford still seems up to the role.
This proves to be an excellent, exciting comedy adventure, with as much invention and tension as its predecessors. Set in McCarthy anti-Communist 1957, when the authorities are too busy blaming their own heroes while real KGB agents break into the top secret US bases unnoticed, Indy and a treacherous old ally (Ray Winstone) are captured by Cate Blanchett (in magnificent barking mad, snarling evil and sexy form) and forced to help locate a mysterious mummy figure from a Roswell Area 51 type warehouse. The KGB has replaced the Nazis as the leading villains of the piece.
Indy escapes the Russians in a chase that trashes much of the warehouse. From one broken crate we get a glimpse of the Ark from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. Indy now finds himself in the midst of a nearby nuclear testing site with a bomb blast imminent and saves himself by getting into a lead lined fridge-freezer which is thrown clear by the blast.
The Americans want their mummy back and engineer the end of Indy’s teaching career, and that of his dean, played by an underused Jim Broadbent. Indy laments the deaths of his father (Sean Connery) and old friend Denholm Eliot.
Indy is now approached by a rebellious kid, excellently played by Shia LeBeouf, who appears first dressed in perfect impersonation of Marlon Brando in The Wild One, and who gets Indy to help look for a missing fellow archaeologist (played by John Hurt). The trail leads to the Andes, and the Amazon, following an Erich Von Daniken inspired trail of muguffin clues suggesting that the Mayans and others worshipped alien spacemen as gods – the crystal skull itself being an alien head that the aliens want back. It all ends in spectacular destruction and mayhem in El Dorado, which turns into a spectacular alien UFO.
Hokum at its best, with great chases and some silliness along the way/ The motorbike chase early on is superb, as is the sword fight as Blanchett & cut and thrust and parry from the back of fast moving jeeps. The funniest moment is when Indie points out to the kid that he has just brought a knife to a gunfight. The silliness comes with the quicksand scene, with Indie reluctant to grab a snake that is offered as a rope, and LeBeoff’s Tarzan like rescue by the monkeys. John Hurt’s convenient recovery from gibbering wreckage to articulate exposition-spouting hero is also too convenient.
The nicest touch is the return of Karen Allen, Indie’s assistant in Raiders Of The Lost Ark, and it is no surprise that the kid is their now grown up son. The closing wedding is a nice touch. The kid trying to take Indie’s hat failing as Indie keeps his trademark headgear on his own head to show that he may not yet give up adventuring for domesticity is a terrific closing touch.
Arthur Chappell
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