The return of a hero

AS far as iconic film idols go, Indiana Jones no doubt ranks among the top. Right next to Luke Skywalker in fact. It helps a great deal that the winning tandem of George Lucas and Steven Spielberg are the producer and director respectively of this great film franchise. I’ve always loved the trilogy and to my mind, Harrison Ford was always Indiana Jones, never mind all his other movies like Working Girl, Sabrina and Presumed Innocent to name a few.
A few months ago, I was reading the Vanity Fair article on the upcoming 4th (and hopefully last) Indiana Jones, and was surprised to learn that George Lucas had found the McGuffin, that perfect, long elusive idea around which to build the last story in the series. More ominously, he added that, most fans and critics will probably not like it but that he was doing the movie anyway. And true enough, when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull did show last May, critics and even fans were less than enamored of it. Two months after it first showed, I finally went to see it with some trepidation. I have to say that I was warned by a number of people that it wasn’t as good as the other three. Maybe because we are easy going movie goers or true fans of Indy, we liked the movie a great deal. It proved to be engrossing, fun and full of tongue in cheek humor.
All the elements that make a great Indiana movie are present. Safe to say that trio that is Lucas, Spielberg, and the ever charismatic Ford, have once again worked their magic. There’s Indy, who the movie makes no secret has gotten on in years, though not so old as to be unable to outwit and outrun the baddies, there’s the exotic locale, in this case Peru, the hold your breath, edge of your seat action sequences, and then there’s the added bonus of cheeky youth in the person of Mutt, who it turns out is much more closely related to Indy than first appears. Of course it wouldn’t be complete without the villain, and I loved that it was the fabulous Cate Blanchett with her butch completely kick ass bowl cut hair. As always there’s the treasure hunt and if the critics and fans were disappointed at the end with what finally turns up, I found that it was in keeping with the era in which the movie is set in. The movie is after all set in the 50s, a time where paranoia was rife over aliens and communism. And if this is giving a little bit away, have no fear, the pleasure that comes with letting ourselves be carried away by the swagger and bluster of Indy as he takes us along for a heck of a ride is still very much present.