INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL Review

by Terry Keefe

[SPOILERS AHEAD] In short, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull fires strongly on almost every cylinder, and that turns out to be more than enough. Not as groundbreaking an entry in the series as The Lost Ark, but an equal, at least, to Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade. That will be welcome news to all who grew up on the 70s and 80s films of Spielberg and Lucas but were sorely disappointed with the Star Wars prequels. It is profoundly depressing to see a new entry in a beloved film series which doesn't measure up. The familiar theme music plays, the iconography is the same, but the magic isn't there. Or in the parlance of many a fanboy message board, "You raped my childhood."

The magic is there with Indiana Jones and Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Oh man, it's there.

Set in 1957, Indiana is launched into his newest quest after being visited by young tough guy Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf) whose mother, and former Indy flame, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and surrogate father Professor Oxley (John Hurt) have both been kidnapped by a group of Russians headed by the rapier-wielding Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett). The Russians are on a quest for a mythical object known as the Crystal Skull of Akator.

After watching director Steven Spielberg get completely sucked into the bloated set and effect abyss of Hook and then go through the motions on the first two Jurassic Park films, my feeling was that his interest in directing the big-budget popcorn films (that he, along with Lucas, practically invented in a modern sense) had waned and that he really only was willing to give himself 100% to the more serious dramatic fare which has rightfully garnered him a number of Oscars. I was way off on that one. The rollicking set pieces of Crystal Skull are filled with joy and are a much-needed lesson to younger directors on how to shoot action. Rather than just throwing CGI clusterbombs of explosions at the screen in an attempt to make the audience go "Wow" due to sensory overload, Spielberg structures his set pieces like a finely-oiled machine. They have beats of action and dialogue which build upon each other and keep building, to the point that you're out of breath when they finally end. None of the action sequences quite hit the level of the giant rolling ball of the Lost Ark opening, but the car/truck chase through the Amazon is a classic of its type - more enjoyable, in my opinion, than the truck chase in Lost Ark. The sequence is marred only by a brief comedic segue way of sorts when Shia LaBeouf is thrown up into the trees and follows some monkeys back into the action, via swinging on the vines the way they do. A set piece involving thousands of killer ants is harrowing and icky, and a motorcycle chase through the college campus in the first act serves as a nice introduction to LaBeouf's possibilities as the future wielder of the Jones whip, vine-swinging aside.

LaBeouf is clearly being groomed to eventually take over the series from Ford, and when I initially heard of his casting, I was honestly not thrilled about seeing Indiana with a Robin-style sidekick, despite enjoying Short Round from Temple of Doom. It seemed an obvious and calculated attempt to bring in the younger audience. But LaBeouf is sharp, funny, and a credible action star as Mutt Williams. He's introduced looking very much like Marlon Brando in The Wild One, pulling into town a motorcycle, wearing a leather jacket, a beret, and a pompadour. The script from David Koepp provides LaBeouf with some great 50s-themed one-liners, which play as both comedy and tips-of-the-hat to the tough guy roles of the period.

Ford reminds us all over again why he became one of the biggest movie stars in the world. He can do more with a wry grin or a doubletake than most actors can with a soliloquy. The expected jokes are tossed out here and there to acknowledge his age, but once the action revs up, it's Indiana Jones and it doesn't matter that a man in his 60s, hell, his 30s, couldn't do most of this stuff without being hospitalized. But the creakiness that is obviously in the joints of Jones actually works in the favor of the action. With every leap, you're worried he might genuinely get injured and that ups the excitement. Physically, he feels closer to a regular guy now, and that only increases his appeal as an action hero.

Indy and Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett).

Karen Allen as Marion is a very welcome return. The best of the Indy heroines by far, and his worthy match in every way.

Indiana Jones has been brought into the Atomic/Cold War Age with this new film, and that's both a plus and also the source of my main set of minuses. Indiana is now operating in an America filled with paranoia and the recently-emerged threat of nuclear annihilation. It's a new element to the series that the U.S. Government may not trust Indy now, despite all the work he's done for them in the past. Anyone could be on the side of the Communists, and after an initial run-in with Spalko in Area 51, Indiana loses his teaching position when suspicious G-Men start snooping around the campus. Things are no longer black and white in the fight against evil. Indiana is now dealing in the murky grey world of 1950s America. It's here that the advancing age of the hero is felt in a way very beneficial to the story. He's sort of becoming a man out of time. The world is changing around him rapidly, but Indiana is nothing if not firmly set in his ways. Nonetheless, he's the only one who can save the world when called upon, and to show the younger set how it's done.

While we've previously seen Indy pursuing powerful artifacts which are Biblical or, more generally, mythical in origin, the Crystal Skull is a new type of treasure for the series because it has a science fiction-based aspect to it. Believed to be the actual skull of a space alien, the Crystal Skull ultimately leads to a third act which includes the appearance of a creature which may not quite be extra-terrestrial in the specific definition of that term, but which nonetheless is not human. The payoff of the Crystal Skull's secrets has definite elements of Close Encounters and also The X-Files to it, and that felt a bit off tonally, at least in terms of the world that has been set up in this series. It's clear that the intention was to expand the world of Indiana Jones to include a wider arena of mythology and, specifically, science-fiction, but the Crystal Skull feels as if it were from a slightly different filmic universe, pardon that pun. Granted, the belief in aliens and the paranoia that accompanied it was very much a part of post-WWII America. The supposed crash of a saucer in Roswell, New Mexico and its supposed subsequent housing in Area 51 is so much a part of American mythology now that it barely needs an introduction when discussed in the first act of this film. And certainly, the theory that UFOs were involved in the building of ancient South American civilizations is a frequently-spoken concept. The Crystal Skull fits well on those levels, but it can, nonetheless, be an odd fit with the Mayan tomb-raiding at times.

Regardless of these complaints, this is a return to form for all involved...and a reminder of how it's done.