That Indie Movie

No, obviously not the latest piece of dreck from Lionsgate(*), but Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, of course! As a friend of mine put it "a worthy addition to the Indiana Jones movies". I mostly agree with that, although I'm not going to quickly throw in "worthy".

Certainly there are a lot of set action pieces, interspersed with minor exposition scenes, so that fits in with the other movies. I did flash back a lot to the other movies, and the wanna new Indiana Jones (aka Nick Cage in those National Treasure movies), so can't claim that Steven was being original here. (There are solid continuity links to Raiders and Last Crusade, which was nice, but some times that served the plot, and other times...) Oh, yeah, and standard movie physics were in vogue with everything exploding at the slightest touch. On the "uhhh.." side, there was an obvious revelation, and the ending went into bizarro world. Not sure why...

But we must speak of the main star, of course, one Harrison Ford. Let's be honest, the man has done a lot of work over the years, and being asked to bring back Indiana at age 65... Yeah, I'm going to say it: I think he was too old to be in this movie. He still has incredible screen presence, but... you could see his hands shaking as he held the props! And there were definite stunts that were clearly shot without seeing "Indiana"'s face (although, fair do, there were some stunts with Harrison clearly evident). It was nice to see him, but for him in a fifth movie... (and there were originally five movies planned.)

As for the other stars, Cate Blanchett just looked weird in the short black wig, although her blue eyes were as piercing as ever. John Hurt... amazing actor, not sure he was used to his best here. And Karen Allen returns, although not a name many people would recognise unless they were familiar with the previous Indy movie (that said, I'm not sure this film would work independent of the others with the references made). As for Shia LaBeouf... even after looking at his credits, I can't remember him in other movies...

This is a movie you'll go see whether I say to or not, so instead let me merely say make sure you are comfortable while watching. Either the seats at Readings are getting smaller or... no, it's the seats I'm sure...

(*) I presume there is one.

[END]