One of the first "modern" action blockbusters, but with the enduring aura of a classic

Rating: 9/10 (20 February 2014)

One of the things that makes "Raiders of the Lost Ark" stand out among "modern" action movies, i.e. action movies in the era of summer blockbusters that Lucas helped to create, is the way that it seems to have been transported to us from an earlier time. It is well-known that George Lucas was interested in recreating the feel of 1930s and 1940s adventure and sci-fi serials, not only for Indiana Jones but for Star Wars as well. The Indiana Jones movies, and "Raiders" most of all, therefore does not look like a big-budget production. It makes very little obvious use of special effects technology, even less so than Star Wars which had mostly used practical effects such as scale models and puppets. The distinctive Indiana Jones color palette is drab, from the tweedy earth-tones of an archaelogy professor's office to the olives and grays of WWII-era military vehicles to the unadorned off-whites of a desert tent village. The movie's image quality is, by design, ever so slightly dusty and murky. It feels nostalgic and vintage, and I recall it feeling that way even when I first encountered it as a child in the early 1990s. It feels small and unprepossessing, like a secret that very few have uncovered. It is like nothing so much as an old classic newly rediscovered. Perhaps that is also what helps keep it fresh so many years later. To rediscover it now, or ten years ago, or ten years from now, is to be transported not to 1981 but to a mythical version of the 1930s, reimagined here as the last age of globe- trotting adventurers, with a layover travel map a la "Casablanca," and Arabian bazaars and snakes and pith helmets and, of course, those ever- scheming Nazis. It doesn't hurt that the story is rock-solid and moves along at a perfect clip, that the script hits every note it aims for from humorous to mystical to "epic," and that Harrison Ford and Karen Allen have great chemistry together (she should have been his partner throughout the trilogy; she radiates confidence and power even when the script tries to limit her to the pot-smashing damsel-in-distress role.) It may seem strange that such a purely entertaining movie, with no whiff of a message and no grand artistic pretensions, would occupy such a prominent place in the history of film, comfortably making both AFI lists of the 100 best American movies and enjoying almost universal critical and popular acclaim. But since you have seen it, as almost everyone of all ages has, you know why it does.