simply the greatest film ever made

Rating: Null/10 (2 July 2001)

If I had the power, I would crown RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK the absolute greatest film ever made. Well, that'll never happen, but it has in my mind. It's basically the blueprint for how to make a great action movie. Other than STAR WARS, this was the film I was most-obsessed with when I was little. I remember wearing my Indiana Jones-style Fedora and my little shoulder bag, using a whip my dad had to swing around in the backyard while I sang John Williams's world-famous "Raiders March." I was only two years old when the film came out, so I never had the chance to see it up on the big screen the way it was meant to be seen. I find it so entertaining because it has a little bit of everything: action, adventure, horror, suspense, and even a bit of romance. It's got the perfect actors playing the perfect roles, the story is good, the music is excellent (my all-time favorite soundtrack, too), the direction is top notch, and the pacing is great. There's not a dull moment in this movie. Even the quiet dialogue scenes are enjoyable, with some of the best lines ever written ("I am but a shadowy reflection of you. It would take only a nudge to make you like me. To push you out of the light.") or improvised ("It's not the years, honey. It's the mileage.") The supporting cast is great as well, and the villains are appropriately creepy, and Belloq is one of my favorite screen villains. Not because he's menacing, but because he's just as interesting as the hero of the film. Harrison Ford and Indiana Jones is, without a doubt, one of the greatest--if not THE greatest--matches between actor and character. The action pieces are great as well: who can forget Indy's escape from a booby-trapped South American temple, or his fight with a huge Nazi mechanic near the deadly blades of a giant Nazi plane, or the thrilling truck chase through the desert which is still my favorite action sequence of all time. (As if you couldn't tell, RAIDERS has a lot of things that I rank as my "all-time favorites"). I'm shocked that there have been no plans to rerelease the film in the theaters for it's twentieth anniversary this year, and that there's still no plans for a DVD release. How could RAIDERS not get both? The greatest film ever made certainly deserves it.