Unexpected classic!

Rating: Null/10 (6 August 2000)

Spoilers!
One of the greats of cinema. Without question, one of the greatest films ever made, probably surprising the heck out of the producer and director, behind it - who were shooting for a . . . 'B' movie.
Harrison Ford breaks out of Han Solo into a character even shadier, at times, and even more resourceful (I'm just making it up as I go along). They had signed Tom Selleck. But Ford didn't joke around - unlike in later Raiders films. He had an edge, maybe honed from years as the tv bad guy gunslinger on Gunsmoke, and the like. He was everyman, but not the '80s man. He was tough. And if Star Wars didn't make him a star - though it basically did - then seeing him spin around and disarm the guy about to shoot him in the back, using only a whip, marked the beginning of Harrison Ford, superstar.
The score is Oscar calliber, and really contributes overall to the film. The direction is generally very crisp and the 'flow' just about right. Nice editing. There's humor in the film, but the characters aren't prostituted for the sake of cheap jokes. One might argue the introduction of Marion is little unbelievable, maybe even a bit long. But it's difficult to find an extraneous scene, or a needless movement, in this. From start to finish, it's quick cut, the action follows logically, and even the obv plot holes (Indy hanging on the sub, for ex) are forgotten with the next astonishing scene. However much Speilberg, Lucas and others may have thought it was all a hodgepodge of 'great ideas' that they'd always 'wanted to do', that these were just 'intended' to be B movies, the film is well crafted, well thought out, with convincing bad guys, with the sense of real threat and danger to the heroes, with competent allies (not buffoons), and with a prize at the end of the quest of which is certainly worth standing in awe.
Marion, maybe because Allen was so striking on screen herself, was actually an interesting character, even though she's in hysterics much of the time. She had a feel for a kind of bratty banter that the 'classier dames' of subsequent films couldn't match. One could identify with her, in the jokes (as with the frying pan to the head), and in the serious moments, with the fire blowing past them tied to that pole. She was the girl next door, embarked on an adventure she never anticipated from a life she never wanted. but who distinguished herself with honor, nonetheless. Indy knew what he was in for. Not her.
There was also a sense of discovery, absent in the next films. It was new. This stuff was something to cheer, to be interested in. Take a moment to take it in. Cairo! - Rhys-Davies, shouts. And it is an interesting roof top view and setting. But he's not a jokester. He says it with a calm pride. There's the sub pens. There's the German flying wing, full on aircraft, that goes spectacularly - boom! There's the thing with the red line and the map, that became the cliche - where in the world are we now, kind of thing. We see the map room, a remarkable set, and the well of souls, equally remarkable, and the sunset above. The presence of the supernatural is also there, throughout, from that beam in the map room, to the burning off of the swastika on the crate, to even Belloc's challenge - blow it up! - which he knew Indy could never do. It's bright - lots of scenes out in the sunlight, lots of bright, non-colored, natural looking lighting. Not exactly Blade Runner (which was another good H. Ford film, in its own right). It's bright, it's new, there's something going on here, it's . . . a movie.
And it's important to remember the plot. They find the Ark, fairly early on. It's supernatural. So it's supernaturally dangerous, conceivably, a supernatural weapon in the wrong hands - though that's never really explained; and we see what happens at the end to the bad guys, who have the Ark. But, before that, at some level, we can imagine there's a risk if it falls into Nazi hands. We suspend belief. And so, a good portion of the movie is the Ark chase. We know why it's important. We understand the prize. There's no question about what the movie is about, and where it's going - possession of the Ark, the US or Germany its destination. Maybe in that it really is clear-cut, like the serials they were copying. It's sort of like a James Bond, some secret agent, with the amplified, domesday, supernatural destructo ray in his car, trying to get back to England and avoid the evil goons of the evil warlord. Cause we can't let them have the weapon. The movie makes sense, even if some of the scenes don't always. There's the urgency that the Ark not fall into the wrong hands. And to that there's no question. What Ark? THAT Ark. You see, the one in the big box. That Ark, right there. We have to put it in our truck, or they'll put it on their truck. Just that simple. And I think something that simple was lost in subsequent Raiders efforts, as well. So, too, for a few reasons you can call it a computer game plot, if you like. But a real computer game plot, as in subsequent efforts, or say in The Phantom Menance, are far less worthy and satisfying and very different than what Lucas and Spielberg achieved in Raiders of the Lost Ark.