Three's a charm...

Rating: 9/10 (16 February 2006)

STAR RATING: ***** The Works **** Just Misses the Mark *** That Little Bit In Between ** Lagging Behind * The Pits
Indy's back in action again, this time on the trail of nothing less than the Holy Grail, which he's been aware of since his father (Sean Connery) seemingly spent more time on the quest for it than him as a boy. He should expect the usual double crossing, mysterious twists and hair-raising adventures as the first two films made him used to.
As the most recent (and coincidentally longest) Indy Jones movie, this could well be the one best suited to my times. Unlike it's two predecessors, this one doesn't open in the action and as such has time to develop a more engaging and well planned out story. For the younger audience, it even tries to add on a little morality lesson at the end about resisting the lure of evil and letting go of things we cannot change. Possibly being the most recent, it has probably the most convincing, well filmed action sequences too (well, not quite up to the standards of TTOD perhaps, but still very good...)
As for Ford's performance, he's still a rather wooden actor, but because of the extra emotion involved in the story, here he gets a chance to display some more taut scenes which he manages adequately. Because of Connery's stubborn refusal to drop his Scottish accent, he even has to manage one himself at one point and he certainly sounds more Scot than French, which he appears.
Coming onto The Last Crusade's home page, I noticed it is in the top 250 and I even noticed a reviewer who said it was the best film in the series. Dare I say it, I agree with him, the one film with the most satisfying combination of a good story with some fine action scenes and certainly fine Bank Holiday Monday entertainment. ****