Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
a review by William the Bloody
It is 1957. Our film opens with Indiana and British MI-5 agent Mac captured by a group of Russians. These Russians manage to gain access to a top secret United States storage facility on US soil and need Dr. Jones to locate a specific item for them. It seems Indiana was involved in the original inspection of these top secret materials about ten years ago so these Russians, namely their head of supernatural phenomena Irina Spalko, believe he is the man to find this one item in a warehouse of thousands unmarked crates (sound familiar?). Find it he does, and the Russians manage to make off with the goods, but only because Indy's trusted friend Mac had turned on him for money. Back at Dr. Jones's university where he teaches about ancient cultures and archeology, the FBI are investigating him and forcing him out of the profession out of paranoid fear that he could be in league with communists, since the Russians managed to escape with good Jones helped admittedly aided them in procuring. Picking up the pieces of his life, Dr. Jones is attempting to leave town to start over elsewhere when he is approached by a young greaser on a motorcycle begging for his help. This greaser, "Mutt" as he likes to be called, claims that his family is long time friends with one of Dr. Jones old college chums, Professor Oxley, and unfortunately Oxley was researching something which got him into a lot of trouble and he went missing. Mutt's mother went to search for him and ended up kidnapped as well. She managed to send her son a letter along with some ciphers of Oxley's with instructions that university professor Dr. Jones would be able to read the cipher and help both her and Oxley get out of danger. Indeed, nearly one look at the coded message reminds Dr. Jones of his old friend's obsession with the Spanish conquistadors and the lost city of gold, and in it are the directions to the beginning of a series of locations which will lead Indy on the trail of not only rescuing his friends, but also the fables lost city. Indy and anyone else following him that is.
The Good: Nearly twenty years since the last Indiana Jones film, yet Harrison Ford still somehow pulled it off. The great thing about the Indiana Jones franchise is that they take place well into the past and also jump around in time, so making this installment take place years after the previous one makes the aged appearance of our returning characters fit right in. This film also had all of the classic earmarks of an Indy film, including a simultaneous chase and fight scene, a large mass of creepy crawlies, cobwebbed crypts, world travel, map locations connected by red lines, bad guys with thick eastern European accents, supernatural twists, traps, secret codes, lost treasure, action, adventure, romance, bouts of comedy, fun, excitement, double crosses and greed, whips and a fedora.
The Bad: Test... test... can you hear me? Okay, good. Ahem. I really, really, really, really don't like Shia Labeouf. That's four "really"s, just so we're clear. Granted, his performance here was much better than the one in Transformers, but still, blech. And you know, it totally felt like his character was shoehorned into this movie. It was like they didn't think Indiana Jones as a 65 year old actor could reel in the young audience so insert a young, "hip" twenty something to attract the teenagers. The movie could have totally worked without his character "Mutt" even in it! Seriously. One of the big flaws I found in the film was a bit involving Mutt swinging on vines, and I know I can't be alone on that. I don't care that he became so adept at vine swinging exceptionally fast, it's that he got so good at it as to defy the space-time continuum. See, Mutt winds up caught in the jungle tree canopy, fine. He starts swinging around, fine. He spies through a gap in the trees the ongoing fight between the Russians and his mom as they drive around ramming their cars into each other. This was seen by him off in the relative distance, yet he somehow manages to swing to this fight and disrupt the Russians by hitting their vehicle. These vehicles were moving very fast and the jungle in between him and the chase scene was very thick, as we could see by the fact that Mutt only caught a glimpse of them through a small gap in the trees. How could he have possibly hit a moving target when he couldn't see where that target was going and that target was moving away from him faster than he could travel?? I very much doubt he could swing on these vines well enough to be faster than a car could drive on a dirt road. Come on now. Spielberg, I call shenanigans. Getting away from "theBeef" for a minute, I also never really liked how many of Spielberg's movies end on waaaaaaay too much of a happy note. I'm all for the happy ending, yes, but they really beat you over the head with it, especially here, I thought. Oh and this film suffered from a serious lack of John Rhys-Davies.
All in all, it was indeed a fun filled action excitement adventure. It felt just like an Indiana Jones movie ought to feel, and that feeling is pretty good.
B