Review by Brian Tallerico 

Since Harrison Ford first cracked a whip in one of the best movies of all time, Raiders of the Lost Ark, countless imitators have stepped forward to try and take the action/adventure throne away from Indiana Jones. The Mummy and National Treasure franchises are the most blatant examples of Indy wannabes, but there have been dozens of others that have attempted to crib from the playbook of not just Raiders but even The Temple of Doom and The Last Crusade. Like a veteran player coming back to show the young whippersnappers how the game should really be played, Steven Spielberg returns to the multiplex this summer with Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Does it live up to the hype? Well, it depends on which hype you're talking about. The twenty years of expectations, a few changes in CGI advancements, and a frequent flaw in Spielberg’s recent filmmaking does, regretably, hold Crystal Skull back from permanent residence on the same pedestal as the first three Indy movies. However, if you're talking about the hype surrounding the film's Cannes premiere – that this was another Da Vinci Code, a movie held back from critics because, well, it sucked – that bit of buzz couldn’t be more wrong. It’s not a perfect movie, but for many, many people, Crystal Skull will be the best action film of the summer. It’s proof that things may not get better with age, but for people this talented, they don’t get much worse.

The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull opens with an action sequence that stands with some of the best in the franchise. In the late 1950s, Indy (Harrison Ford) and his partner in derring-do, George "Mac" McHale (Ray Winstone) are pulled from a car trunk by a group of angry Russkies, led by quite possibly the best villain in the entire franchise, Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett). They've brought Indy to a desert Army base to help them find a particular crate in the secret Hangar 51 that holds something not of this world. (No, not the ark, though Raiders fans won't be disappointed by the sequence.) After Mac turns against him, Indy is forced to escape through not just countless gun-wielding Commies, but also an actual nuclear explosion. Crystal Skull settles down (a bit too much) after the slam-bang opener, as we meet Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), a young greaser who seeks out Indy's help after his father figure (and former colleague of Dr. Jones), Professor Oxley (John Hurt), goes crazy and disappears in South America. Apparently, Mutt’s mom told him that Dr. Jones would be the one to turn to when history’s mysteries got intensely dangerous, and it was good advice. Indy and Mutt travel to Peru, following Oxley's quest for the Crystal Skull of Akator, a mysterious object that may be both proof of alien life and a way to communicate with the "Saucer Men from Mars" once again. While deep in the jungles of South America, Spalko and the Commies return as does a familiar face from the first film, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen). I'm not going to overtly reveal her connection to Mutt here, but let's just say that the Jones family has a history of nicknaming kids after the dog.

The opening twenty minutes of Crystal Skull are so perfect that they make the slight missteps that follow over the next two hours that much more forgivable. And even the opening sequence is topped by an amazingly choreographed chase scene through the rainforest that features a swordfight, swinging monkeys, and killer ants. It’s one of the best action moments in the history of the franchise, and it alone makes Crystal Skull worth seeing. The Indy movies have always been about escapism, and you probably won’t find a sequence more likely to turn your cynical movie-going heart into a gleeful eight-year-old this entire summer.

So, even with the two amazing set-pieces, what holds Crystal Skull back from achieving original trilogy-level perfection? It’s the little things. One of the charms of the Indy films, especially the first one, was its old-fashioned aesthetic. It’s just hard to feel that same rush of something actually happening in the era of CGI and, even though Spielberg has said that he wouldn’t use too much of it Crystal Skull, when he does, you feel it. Even the little things (like the CGI monkeys) feel out of place and the use of effects in the final sequence feel like they came out of another franchise. Even more problematic is Spielberg’s recent habit of hitting the nail on the head one too many times. Before we even see Indy, Crystal Skull features a drag race with some clearly ‘50s-era kids listening to “Hound Dog” as they speed down the road. THEN Spielberg puts up “Nevada 1957” in a subtitle. Wasn’t conveying the time period the entire point of the drag race, the outfits, the car, and the song? And, of course, the gang in Crystal Skull can’t fall over just ONE waterfall. They have to fall over three in a row. Like most of the movies Spielberg's made in the last decade, Crystal Skull goes on for at least two scenes too long, continuing a movie-long habit of hitting every beat and plot point several times too often. Spielberg is still a master, but what he’s lost in the last decade is a sense of subtlety from early in his career.

In the end, most of our fanboy concerns about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull were wrong. Would it have been better ten to fifteen years ago? Probably, but there’s still magic in what Spielberg, Lucas, and Ford (and great regular collaborators like John Williams and Janusz Kaminski) can accomplish together. Crystal Skull could have easily felt like a rock band past its prime, trying to recapture something that just isn’t there any more, but, despite its imperfections, it never does. The man with the whip still knows how to rock.

Rating: THREE AND A HALF BONES

Release Date: May 22nd, 2008

Rating: PG-13

Starring: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, and Jim Broadbent

Director: Steven Spielberg

Writers: David Koepp