Indiana wants me

Rating: 9/10 (12 September 2015)

I'm not the biggest fan of either Steven Spielberg or Harrison Ford come to that. "E.T.", "Close Encounters", the whole "Star Wars" thing, hate them all. But this is different. I do love a swashbuckling adventure movie and here Spielberg gives us the ultimate old- fashioned actioner. Spielberg has described his Indiana Jones as his take on James Bond, only with less intrigue and less sex but with more excitement and levity. Like Bond Indy has his own signature theme tune, gets a spine tingling big-budget opening prologue, can fight like the blazes and of course, gets the girl. Setting the movie during the Second World War provides easily identifiable baddies in the form of the pursuing Nazis and also means it has much less reliance on modern gimmicks and gadgets. If anything though the set-piece action sequences are better here than anything surely done to date even whilst some of the stunts recall Golden Age Hollywood, for example Indy's crawl under a speeding truck is only a variation of the same under an out of control wagon in many a Western of yore.
Richly shot, the set constructions are excellent, the outside locations are radiantly captured, the special effects and stunts are great, I especially liked Spielberg's imaginative use of silhouettes in some of the scenes. The script is tight and witty and is clever enough to preface later actions with earlier clues, like Alice's drinking ability and Indy's fear of snakes. There are also some nice throwaway comedic lines with not a raised eyebrow in sight.
The destructive effects of the Ark fully live up to dread expectation in the Germans' submarine bay but other highlights include the afore-mentioned car-chase and Jones' short and sweet encounter with a surprise whip-waving adversary.
As a great lover of old Hollywood plot-thin action-packed blockbusters, this could hardly be bettered with Harrison Ford echoing the spirit of Errol Flynn, Tyrone Power and Stewart Grainger. This is one of those rare movies which is as much fun as it looks like it was to make and thoroughly deserved its huge box-office success.