What a blast

Rating: 8/10 (15 March 2014)

Every time I see that Fedora silhouetted against that huge mountain it makes me giggle, because I know that a fun ride is in store for the next hour and forty five minutes.
Made to look like 1930s adventure serials, it has a great comic book flare to it throughout, as our globe-trotting hero searches for the Arc of the Covenant, with his ex lover in tow. The Nazis (fueled by Hitler's rumoured love of all things occult) are hot on its trail, making matters worse for them both.
The stuntmen involved in filming this earned they money, whether dodging a plane's moving propellers during a fist fight, or jumping onto a moving sea plane, as this is full of real action, not CGI, Some of the action set-pieces are a bit outlandishly over-the-top, but who cares? The film is so much fun to watch.
A great sense of innocent, childlike wonder and awe. Enough action for three movies. Plenty of intentional humour to relieve tension and suspense, to give the viewer a chance to breathe. It tries to make you skin crawl in scenes (with spiders and plenty of snakes and other crawling things) but it doesn't overdo it with gore and violence. There is even a bit of romance between Indiana Jones and Marion Crane, and a terrific score.