Still a teriffic action/adventure,though maybe not the best of the trilogy

Rating: Null/10 (23 October 2003)

Raiders Of The Lost Ark is now generally regarded as one of the greatest adventure movies ever made,and for the most part,they'll right.Steven Spielberg and George Lucas succeeded in ressurrecting the style of 30s/40s serials for an 80s audience,keeping all the elements one half-remembers from viewing 'cliffhangers'as a kid on TV or just EXPECTS from a great adventure yarn,such as hidden treasure,lost tombs,fights,nasty creatures such as snakes and spiders,evil villains,they put 'em all in there,and than always remembering not to take it TOO seriously.Infact the film's tone is almost perfect,it seems constantly aware of it's own ludicrousness but never becomes camp.
It can possibly be said of Raiders that the long opening sequence,as our hero encounters one peril after another in a Peruvian tomb,is so great,it so captures the spirit of pure adventure,that the rest of the film never quite reaches it's giddy heights.It also shows Spielberg's skill as a director[and Lawrence Kasdan's writing]in introducing and sketching out the personality of our hero,Indiana Jones while all this action takes place.After this the film certainly goes down a notch or to-two brief fights in Tibet and Egypt are all we have in terms of thrills until just after half way when we have a brilliantly sustained passage of non-stop action climaxing in a truck chase sequence which is one of the best sequences of it's kind ever.Oddly however the climax features not some more Indy action but the Wrath of God,an original but not completley satisfying touch,with Indy pretty much redundant.This final scene also takes the film uneasily into horror territory,an area occasionally strayed onto by the film,which perhaps jars with many of the other elements of the film[while the first sequel,Indiana Jones and The Temple Of Doom,saw it's dark aspects become far more neccessary to it's overall feel and story].
Set against some of today's action/adventure films,Raiders does seem a little slow,with perhaps not quite enough action setpieces,but it still holds up with it's sharp writing and charcterisation,particularly with Karen Allen's spunky heroine and ofcourse Indy himself,who really has a dark edge to him and is a milliom miles away from the clean-cut heroes of the serials,as is some surprisingly strong and reallistic violence,almost completely different to that in ,say,Star Wars. It's impossible now to imagine anyone but Harrison Ford playing Indiana.Ofcourse John William's score deserves a great deal of credit,not only for it's famous main theme but the many other ways it backs up and enhances the film,an examplery adventure score.
Raiders will probably never seem as thrilling as it must have seemed when it first came out,and in some ways the sequels now hold up better.Nevertheless,it's still a great ride.