Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade:The Best Indiana Jones Movie

Rating: 10/10 (14 January 2012)

The third installment in the widely beloved Spielberg/Lucas Indiana Jones saga begins with an introduction to a younger Indy, who, through a fast-paced prologue, gives the audience insight into the roots of his taste for adventure, fear of snakes, and dogged determination to take historical artifacts out of the hands of bad guys and into the museums in which they belong.Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is an adventure film directed by Steven Spielberg, from a story co-written by executive producer George Lucas. It is the third film in the Indiana Jones franchise. Harrison Ford reprises the title role and Sean Connery plays Indiana's father, Henry Jones, Sr. Alison Doody, Denholm Elliott, Julian Glover, River Phoenix, and John Rhys-Davies also have featured roles.After the mixed reaction to the dark Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Spielberg chose to compensate by completing the trilogy with a film lighter in tone.
In the film, set largely in 1938, Indiana searches for his father, a Holy Grail scholar, who has been kidnapped by Nazis.A grown-up Indy reveals himself shortly afterward in a familiar classroom scene, teaching archeology to a disproportionate number of starry-eyed female college students in 1938. Once again, however, Mr. Jones is drawn away from his day job after an art collector approaches him with a proposition to find the much sought after Holy Grail. Circumstances reveal that there was another avid archaeologist in search of the famed cup -- Indiana Jones' father, Dr. Henry Jones -- who had recently disappeared during his efforts. The junior and senior members of the Jones family find themselves in a series of tough situations in locales ranging from Venice to the most treacherous spots in the Middle East. Complicating the situation further is the presence of Elsa, a beautiful and intelligent woman with one fatal flaw: she's an undercover Nazi agent.
Of the three Jones films, The Last Crusade may well become the sentimental favorite.It captures some of the sense of fun that infused the first movie as it was lighter and more comedic than its predecessor (The Temple Of Doom),Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade returns the series to the brisk serial adventure of Raiders while using the addition of Sean Connery to up the comedic ante and provide a father and son dynamic.The eventual arrival of towering screen presence Sean Connery as Dr. Henry Jones, Sr. alongside Harrison Ford as Dr. Henry Jones, Jr. allows for what may be adventure cinema's most potent pairing. Producer/writer George Lucas and director Steven Spielberg will treat movie fans to an Indiana Jones adventure, and it's pretty obvious they were determined to send Indy riding off into the sunset in style.In the end,it's impossible to deny the film's status as the very best of the Indiana Jones franchise.