Action Adventure poem...

Rating: 9/10 (22 June 2017)

Lots of Bogart and Gable in this version of the Saturday matinée adventure serial. The action is ratcheted up and for sheer speed of thrills leaves in the dust such worthy contenders as THE PROFESSIONALS with the likes of Burt Lancaster and Woody Strode, and rivals for plot twists and turns such classics as Hitchcock's THE THIRTYNINE STEPS and THE LADY VANISHES. A humorously virile tale that takes its hero through a roller coaster maze of traps and escapes recalling Clyde Beatty and Harry Houdini.
There is Harrison Ford giving his Indiana Jones character a professorial panache when he's not outrunning the Hovitos cradling a Golden Idol in his arms. There is Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood channeling a little Patricia Neal and out drinking her barroom patrons before greeting the love of her life with a sock as a way of saying 'Hello'. There is Paul Freeman always on hand to take whatever Indy finds during his archaeological forays as his arch rival Rene' Belloq. Ronald Lacey gives his grinning Nazi Major Arnold Toht enough Peter Lorre to be darkly satisfying in his gruesomeness. John Rhys-Davies as the hearty Arab excavator Sallah helps Jones dig in the right place and rounds out a rich and diverse cast of characters.
The pace is as breakneck as the Indianapolis 500 and leaves next to no time to grieve Marion when she's given up for dead in one of a series of teeth chattering death defying explosions. Every time the action clears the air for a little philosophical reflection we are off and running again after something Jones has lost to Nazi enemies or is on the verge of retrieving. Here we see the Fighting Male of the West as a sweaty beleaguered Academic scrambling for relics and artifacts worshiped by primitive cultures in both the East and the fascist West. Lucas provides more mythological motifs than you can shake a Joseph Campbell at, but it's all done with such zest that you barely mind being hit over the head with references to Moses and Odysseus before your breath is taken away.
The sweep brings to mind TOO HOT TO HANDLE with Clark Gable and Myrna Loy, but the bump and the grind and the smashing glass and hiss and blood spatter is purely Spielbergian. It is a homage to old Hollywood and a move in the direction to a new Hollywood before you can blink an eye. This is THE TREASURE OF THE SIERRA MADRE on steroids in a way; a faster paced epic about greed and how things can come to be valued over companionship and human life, but such considerations fly past faster than an arrow or a bullet or a poisoned dart. When it comes to plot pyrotechnics, this film sets the standard for action and adventure to all of the next generation to come.
There is some reference to RAIDERS in most of the summer action blockbusters that now appear on the screen. Perhaps only the great Bruce Lee has been more influential with regard to the choreography of the hero adventure tale as you see his moves in everything from the AVENGERS to SHERLOCK HOLMES to THE BOURNE ULTIMATUM to THE MATRIX. But for sheer plot mechanics and acceleration of the narrative many die hard fans will make theirs Spielberg every time.