"DON'T call me Junior!"

Rating: 9/10 (1 February 2014)

When "Raiders of the Lost Ark" appeared, it defined a new energy level for adventure movies; it was a delirious breakthrough. But there was no way for Spielberg to top himself, and I wish this was the last film in the Indiana Jones movies. That being said, I still consider the Indiana Jones movies just as a trilogy. And as a third and final movie, it's a blast.
Even in this third adventure, some of the key elements are recycled from "Raiders." This time, Indy's quest is to find the Holy Grail, the cup Jesus Christ is said to have used at the Last Supper.
(To drink from the cup is to have eternal youth.) The Holy Grail reminds us of the Ark of the Covenant in the first film, and in both cases the chase is joined by Nazi villains.
The new element this time is how Spielberg fills in some of the past of the Jones character. We learn his real name (which I would not dream of revealing here), and we meet his father, Professor Henry Jones, who is played by Sean Connery on exactly the right note. This is basically ever father character done right, and the banter between these two is to a key. Dr. Jones is not a parent so much as a grown-up ally, an older pal who lacks three dimensions because children are unable to see their parents in that complexity.
Harrison Ford is Indiana Jones again this time, and what he does seems so easy, so deadpan, that few other actors could maintain such a straight and credible presence in the midst of such chaos. After young Indy discovers his life's mission in the early scenes, the central story takes place years later, when Dr. Jones (the world's leading expert on the Holy Grail) is kidnapped by desperados who are convinced he knows the secret of where it is now hidden. He does. And Indy, working from his father's notebook, follows a trail from America to the watery catacombs beneath Venice, and then to the deserts of the Holy Land, where there is a sensational chase scene involving a gigantic Nazi armored tank.
What Spielberg has done is to take many of the same elements, and apply all of his craft and sense of fun to make them work yet once again. And they do.