"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull." Say it aloud.
The very title causes the pulse to quicken, if you, like me, are a
lover of pulp fiction. What I want is goofy action--lots of it. I want
man-eating ants, swordfights between two people balanced on the backs
of speeding jeeps, subterranean caverns of gold, vicious femme fatales,
plunges down three waterfalls in a row, and the explanation for flying
saucers. And throw in lots of monkeys.
The Indiana Jones movies were directed by Steven Spielberg and written
by George Lucas and a small army of screenwriters, but they exist in a
universe
of their own. Hell, they created it. All you can do is compare one to
the other three. And even then, what will it get you? If you eat four
pounds of sausage, how do you choose which pound tasted the best? Well,
the first one, of course, and then there's a steady drop-off of
interest. That's why no Indy adventure can match "Raiders of the Lost Ark"
(1981). But if "Crystal Skull" (or "Temple of Doom" from 1984 or "Last
Crusade" from, 1989) had come first in the series, who knows how much
fresher it might have seemed? True, "Raiders of the Lost Ark" stands alone as an action masterpiece, but after that the series is compelled to be, in the words of Indiana himself, "same old same old." Yes, but that's what I want it to be.
"Crystal Skull" even dusts off the Russians, so severely under-
exploited in recent years, as the bad guys. Up against them, Indiana
Jones is once again played by Harrison Ford,
who is now 65 but looks a lot like he did at 55 or 46, which is how old
he was when he made "Last Crusade." He has one of those Robert Mitchum faces that doesn't age, it only frowns more. He and his sidekick Mac McHale (Ray Winstone) are taken by the cool, contemptuous Soviet uber-villainess Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett)
to a cavernous warehouse to seek out a crate he saw there years ago.
The contents of the crate are hyper- magnetic (lord, I love this stuff)
and betray themselves when Indy throws a handful of gunpowder into the
air.
In ways too labyrinthine to describe, the crate leads Indy, Mac, Irina
and the Russians far up the Amazon. Along the way they've gathered
Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), Indy's girlfriend from the first film, and a young biker named Mutt Williams (Shia LeBeouf), who is always combing his ducktail haircut. They also acquire Professor Oxley (John Hurt),
elderly colleague from the University of Chicago, whose function is to
read all the necessary languages, know all the necessary background,
and explain everything.
What happens in South America is explained
by the need to create (1) sensational chase sequences, and (2)
awe-inspiring spectacles. We get such sights as two dueling Jeep-like
vehicles racing down parallel roads. Not many of the audience members
will be as logical as I am, and wonder who went to the trouble of
building parallell
roads in a rain forest. Most of the major characters eventually find
themselves at the wheels of both vehicles; they leap or are thrown from
one to another, and the vehicles occasionally leap right over one
another. And that Irina, she's something. Her Russian backups are
mostly just atmosphere, useful for pointing their rifles at Indy, but
she can fight shoot, fence, drive, leap and kick, and keep on all night.
All leads to the discovery of a subterranean chamber beneath an ancient
Pyramid, where they find an ancient city made of gold and
containing...but wait, I forgot to tell you they found a crystal skull
in a crypt. Well sir, it's one of 13 crystal skulls, and the other 12
are in that chamber. When the set is complete, amazing events take
place. Prof. Oxley carries the 13th skull for most of the time, and
finds it repels man-eating ants. It also represents one-thirteenth of
all knowledge about everything, leading Irina to utter the orgasmic
words, "I want...to know!" In appearance, the skull is a cross between the aliens of the Special Edition of Spielberg's "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" and the hood ornaments of 1950s Pontiacs.
What is the function of the chamber? "It's a portal--to another
dimension!" Oxley says. Indy is sensible: "I don't think we wanna go
that way." It is astonishing that the protagonists aren't all killed 20
or 30 times, although Irnia will beome The Women Who Knew Too Much. At
his advanced age, Prof.Oxley tirelessly jumps between vehicles,
survives fire and flood and falling from great heights, and would win
on "American Gladiator." Relationships between certain other characters
are of interest, since (a) the odds against them finding themselves
together are astronomical, and (b) the odds against them not finding themselves together in this film are incalculable.
Now what else can I tell you, apart from mentioning the blinking red
digital countdown, and the moving red line tracing a journey on a map?
I can say that if you liked the other Indiana Jones movies, you will
like this one, and that if you did not, there is no talking to you. And
I can also say that a critic trying to place it into a heirarchy with
the others would probably keep a straight face while recommending the
second pound of sausage.
"Raiders of the Lost Ark" is in the Great Movies Collection at rogerebert.com
I'll take the word of Roger Ebert over one of the more negative posters on this forum.