Repetition Helps, but It's Not the Key.

Rating: 9/10 (28 October 2011)

The opening sequence of this third Indiana Jones picture is the one part that really feels fresh, or rather, it recovers 1940s serial and magazine imagery that Spielberg hadn't used yet. The remainder of the film doesn't come as a revelation to Indy fans, but then how could it? The series by then had characterized a household universe of hazardous stunts, breathtaking chases, wry humor and the pursuit of ludicrous objects in extraordinary places.
Raiders and Temple of Doom delineate the modern stamina for action-adventure films. They were a feverish revolution. But there was no way for Spielberg to outdo himself, and maybe it was for the best that Last Crusade was indeed supposed to be Indy's final film, and should've been. It will be heartbreaking watching the rejuvenated series age and tire out. Even in this third escapade, some of the basics are second-hand from Raiders. This time, Indy's mission is to locate the Holy Grail, which calls to mind the first movie's Ark of the Covenant, and both instances are race against Nazi villains.
The new-fangled component this time is how Spielberg enhances some of Indy's backstory. We discover his real name and meet his father, Professor Henry Jones, played by Sean Connery at just the right pitch. Like the fathers of typical boys' stories, Dr. Jones is not a parent so much as a full-grown partner, an older chum who lacks full-bodied characterization because kids can't see their parents as intricate human beings. Perhaps we conjure up the Hardy Boys' father, who rolled his eyes and grinned at the activities of his endearing youngsters and maybe sporadically "worried" or "advised them firmly." Because the Hardy Boys were always mixed up, at a green age, with a never-ending slew of fraudsters, hijackers, Nazi agents and robbers, their father's impassiveness was either transcendental or insane, and Connery enjoys himself with some of the same essentials.
What Ford does looks so simple, so dry, that few other stars could keep such a square and poker-faced poise amid such pandemonium. After young Indy learns his life's mission in the early high point, the predominant plot is set after Raiders, when Henry Jones, the world's foremost Grail connoisseur, is snatched by bandits who are certain he knows where it's now hidden. He does. And Indy, working from Dad's notebook, trails from the States to the waterlogged burial chambers under Venice, and then to the barren regions of the Holy Land, where there is a fun chase including a formidable Nazi armored tank. He's escorted on his expedition by Dr. Elsa Schneider, an art historian he meets in Venice, but the character is a letdown after the fervor of Karen Allen in Raiders, and even the light-heartedness of Kate Capshaw's presence in Temple of Doom.
As had been established as custom with those first two films, Spielberg sets up various set pieces of sophisticated workmanship. The art direction is terrific in a getaway from a zeppelin by airplane. If there's a tinge of disenchantment in this movie, it's because Spielberg simply couldn't reproduce the shock of endless inventiveness and dizzying energy. Raiders and Temple of Doom were a crossroads in the cinema of escapist entertainment, and there was no way Spielberg could make it crisp and fresh yet again.