All but pillaged over the years as the model blockbuster; here and now, the film neatly withstanding time as a giddy excursion into action/adventure filmmaking.

Rating: 7/10 (10 August 2011)

Steven Spielberg has always been the sort of director whom, when provided with a 'log-line' or one sentence premise, has been able to use his ability to just grab the idea by the scruff of its neck and run with it. A bunch of people on an isolated tropical island populated by dinosaurs eventually running amok is given a radical overhaul and transformed into something more exciting and more substantial than it has any right to be; a man drives a car over a long distance across the barren states of the U.S.A., but is terrorised by a crazed truck driver becomes something quite special; a cynical parent of two young children faces the fight of his and his family's life when blood thirsty creatures invade Earth and he must guide them to some sort of safety. Raiders of the Lost Ark, along with the likes of the above in Jurassic Park and Duel among others, feeds off Spielberg in this mood and on this form; a feature that comes complete with dastardly villains trying to end the world; unadulterated heroes; feisty sidekicks; love interests; rounded, jolly foreign supporting acts of a differing ethnicity to that of the lead's as well as the Nazis as the bad guys.
Following the adventures of one of the best loved protagonists in film history, Raiders begins deep in the jungles of South America sometime in the 1930s; the music ominous, a group of men trudging on to what appears to be the laughter of the wildlife as they undertake a march many have previously attempted, but never completed. One of the men, following in a pack behind that of Harrison Ford's lead Indiana Jones, draws a gun; but our man is whip-smart in a literal sense to the revelation, and manages to hear; react; work his skill with the bull-whip he possesses and then defuse the situation without ever having to use grosser means of violence. We can tell Jones knows his stuff, or does his research; he treats a temple "no one has ever come out from alive" as if he had been there before and done what he's about to do a dozen times. He ventures in, his accomplice the picture of fear contrasting Jones' own state, and beats the system; swiping the prize and getting back out again – in the process avoiding a boulder who's trigger system has done well to survive all these centuries of people not making it this far.
There is something indescribably endearing about a man capable of the above, and yet by day, is a stuttering; glasses-wearing academic whom stammers around wielding arrays of scrolls he struggles to carry properly; in turn, knowing an awful lot about issues and subjects of an archaeological nature most would dismiss as somewhat nerdy. Jones is called upon by the American government to come into contact with a Biblical artifact known as the Ark of the Covenant, a mission laid out in no uncertain terms as being highly dangerous and mostly with the threat of the Nazi party spreading their wings into North Africa to try and find it for their own means. As a Macguffin, Spielberg does his utmost to effectively render the thing near enough to a character all by itself; a dangerous, looming character with what appears to be its own mind and priorities as these pesky early-to-mid twentieth century human-beings toy with it; transport it; fight for it but essentially wake it from its rest. An early revealing of the object in sketch form, lying there on a text book page radiating light and power, acts as an unnerving envisaging of what the thing is capable of. Jones initially rejects the proclaimed "power" that the Ark has, citing it as something in the region of "occult mumbo-jumbo", and therein that statement lies a refreshing little transition for Jones to undergo as he learns of its true power and of certain people's dedication towards it.
Working with the Nazis is a French archaeologist named René Belloq (Freeman); an 'Id' to Jones' superego: a well dressed and far more formal man to Jones' grizzled demeanour and whose morals are equally spread eagle on the spectrum. Along for the ride, after an excursion in the snowy barren nothingness of Nepal, Jones enlists Marion Ravenwood (Allen), whom he shares a botched romantic history. Ravenwood is a woman capable of holding her own; the sense of the film's overly guilty disposition rife in its having her in the midst of a drinking contest when we first see her, before placing her at the forefront of a sober; competent conversation with that of another human-being minutes later. Ford and Allen bounce off one another to varying degrees of success, their romance of old constantly hovering in the background as we observe the man's shot at redeeming himself to her as a man and not a runaway – the film maintaining her hard bodied edge throughout proceedings without ever sagging to levels of objectification.
There is an awful lot to enjoy in Raiders with nary a lot to necessarily get agitated about; the film is flat out adventure from the point of the Ark's uncovering, culminating in an eerie finale during which the culmination of several things explode at once in a dizzying moment of terror and thrills. The film is mostly an array of set pieces and stunts, but there is a grounded sense about the chase and adventure. We do not entrust Jones to be infallible; when he is shot, we grimace; when he takes a beating and bleeds, we observe him stumble his way back up and sense injury. In spite of its nature, the film never threatens to descend into that of anything below taut and engaging; rather, it is mostly a project filling us with a joyous feeling - lovingly constructed by a man out to do what he enjoys most, in making something exuberant that his audience can get stuck into.