Classic B film revitalized

Rating: 10/10 (13 November 2000)

The perfect action-adventure matinée movie? Damn near close. If I had to pick it apart I could find a couple of things that aren't exactly flaws but just aren't sensible (ie how Marion just happens to be alive with the explanation of one line). But who need sense when you've got HISTORY, DR JONES?! One thing I noticed this time around though - Marion is really a bad-ass woman! In the annals of tough gals, she may not be Ripley but she could hold her own in a bar fight that had Ripley in it (see how she drinks anyone under the table, and can be sly with a, uh, butter knife!) Maybe it's just in comparison to the horror that is Kate Capshaw, the polar opposite of bad-ass.
But yeah, what else can be said? It's the kind of storytelling that feels so seamless that it almost goes by in a flash, but there's still so much UMPH in those action set-pieces, primarily when Jones is chasing Belloq and the Nazis and drives the truck. Damn if that still doesn't rock one's the socks off. One last thing - the special effects was done by Richard Edlund, who three years later would make the masterpiece of his 80's career with Ghostbusters - I say that since now I can't watch certain sky and make-up fx in this film without yelling ZUUL!