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Movie review: “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
BY MAGGIE SCOTT
Dragged out of the trunk of a car and hurled onto the hard sand of the Nevada desert, he hauls himself upright, nonchalantly smooths the dent out of his fedora and spits out one word—“Russians!”—with the kind of disgust he usually reserves for the likes of Nazis and snakes.
It’s a moment of spine-tingling deja-vu as the legendary professor of archaeology begins his newest adventure, set in 1957, dusting it up with blood-thirsty commies in Steven Spielberg’s latest, and possibly greatest, story in the saga of Indiana Jones, called “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”
From the opening frames, Spielberg lets the viewer know he is as much in the director’s territory as Indy’s. That mound of earth, through which a prairie dog pops, looks…familiar. Of course. The monolith from “Close Encounters of the 3rd
Kind.”
Writer David Koepp will drop references to other Spielberg films and other Indy films throughout the action of this fourth installment of the franchise. It reinforces the feeling that Spielberg is having a blast with the material, at the same time that he’s dead serious about crafting a character the audience is instantly comfortable with, as though the passage of nearly 20 years was merely a step outside for a quick smoke.
Indiana (Harrison Ford) still teaches and still combs the world for artifacts humble and fabled. He’s lived a bit since the Ark of the Covenant was wheeled into a top security warehouse. Besides the doctorate, he’s a colonel, with service in the OSS to his credit. Languages, riddles and maps are no mystery, no matter how ancient, how abstract or how full of hidden messages.
He’s feeling his age, but lets wisdom and un-dulled wit compensate for slower reflexes and less brute strength. He will need every bit of smarts and experience he can summon.
Indy’s familiar with the type of Russkie thugs who manhandle him and his partner, Mac (Ray Winston). But, he’s never met the likes of Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett), a decorated and dedicated Communist patriot. She’s interested in more than destroying America’s democratic and capitalist way of life. She wants power on a universal scale; the kind brought to earth by aliens.
In her pitch-black, Louise Brooks-style bob, black boots and gray uniform, Irina is an inside-out baked Alaska of menace, who will remind most, no doubt, of Boris’s Natasha. She is no cartoon villain, however; and she gives Indy and his cohorts plenty of trouble.
On the professor’s side is a young whippersnapper by the name of Mutt (Shia LaBeouf); Oxley (John Hurt), a former academic colleague who’s gone a bit crackers; and Indy’s lost love, Marion (Karen Allen), still spitting fire and clobbering anybody who messes with her. They’re all off for Peru’s jungles after tumultuous sleuthing yields increasingly exciting and perilous clues to the origin and ultimate significance of the crystal skull Irina believes wasn’t “made by human hands.”
Some of the obstacles to be overcome: scorpions, carnivorous ants, waterfalls, poison darts, quicksand…not to mention an atom bomb blast Indy survives in a most unorthodox, and hysterical way. Cliffhanging peril one minute becomes a humorous double-take the next; and all is smoothly and excitingly integrated for two hours of edge-of-the seat fun that will have you cheering.
A Lucasfilm, Ltd. production, Paramount Pictures release, rated PG-13 for adventure violence, scary images.
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