| Product: |
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (DVD) |
| Date: |
25/01/02 (61 review reads) |
| Rating: |
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Advantages: Ford, Connery
Disadvantages: Poorest of the 3
By the time the third film in Stephen Spielberg's Indiana Jones trilogy came around, the formula was starting to wear just that little bit thin. So thin in fact that the solution was to add a new very special ingredient into the mix. The excellent Harrison Ford was still there of course as the all action hero, but now he had the talents of a father figure to give him succour as Dr Henry Jones made his bow in the mountainous form of the ultimate James Bond, the splendid Sean Connery.
Connery's deep accent and his continual harassment of Junior brings a much lighter and more comical feel to proceedings and for the most part Spielberg plays this one definitely for laughs rather than thrills. It borders on SitCom land with the bookish Connery and the thoroughly rip roaring Ford making a truly odd couple as they battle to find the ultimate treasure, the Holy Grail, with the forces of Nazi Germany returning to fight the bad fight.
Spielberg can't do films without their fair share of action and thrills, however, and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade certainly has an abundance of both. The substance may be a little sparse, but really it doesn't matter as the plot's just a slight little epic framework on which Ford and Connery paint their familial feuds. You even get an opening which takes us back in time to 1912 with the late River Phoenix (who is astonishingly reminiscent facially of Ford) playing the young Indy and giving us a snippet of what would eventually be blown into a full scale television series.
In truth that opening section is a bit superfluous here and smacks a little too much of filler, but I guess that Spielberg wanted to beef up the Generation Game sub text. It'd take a pretty mean soul to find fault with any of this film, because the ups are infinitely more numerous and memorable than the very few downs. It's undoubtedly the weakest of the three Indy films, but a bad Indiana Jones film is a grea
t deal preferable to the majority of what passes for cinematic entertainment these days.
Jones and Connery were made for dramatic comedy and revel in each others' timing and style, bouncing off each other like a genuine father and son, etching in the colour of a father who neglected his son, and a boy who resented that distance. On the other hand, it's a massive stretch of the imagination to believe that a Glaswegian guy like Connery (complete with tweeds and brolly) would father and All American hero like Ford - ah well, there's the rub ... still they both hate the Germans and have a nice line in headgear and witty repartee.
There's some nice set pieces here, like the dogfight with World War I era planes, and Indy presenting Dad's diary to Adolf Hitler, who promptly signs his autograph for his supposed admirer, and as a whole this is a wonderfully enjoyable film, blessed with enough wit and verve to keep many a movie afloat. You even get Alexei Sayle in a ten second cameo as an Arab ruler complete with pretty abysmal false beard, plus a gorgeous, evil, female Nazi with a heart of gold, a sexy German uniform and a deep seated affinity for the attentions of the Jones Boy, along with the oh so English charm of the wonderful Denholm Elliott.
In fact that stereotypical Englishness is pretty typical of the whole piece, because the Germans are all humourless, sadistic, evil brutes, the Americans are heroic and morally superior while the Arabs are in general a pretty feckless and self centred rabble with a fez and a cummerbund. In many hands, such odious simplification would come over cack handed and clumsy, but in the hands of Spielberg it strangely makes absolute sense.
Anyway, you know what German footballers are like, smug and arrogant and too fond of a bit of showy goose-stepping...
But forget the quibbles ... Indy 3 is a great way to sign off a truly stupendous series of adventure movies which r
edefined a genre that had seemed barren in the extreme.
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