| Film Review |
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| Written by Gerry Hill | |
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Venue: Cine 4, Maerua Mall
Film: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull Director: Steven Spielberg Screenwriter: David Koepp Players: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Cate Blanchett, Ray Winstone, John Hurt. Genre: Action; adventure; romance Rating: ***½ Since ‘Close Encounters of the Third Kind’ and ‘E.T.’, Steven Spielberg has specialised in the action adventure: the genre is his forté, in fact. This film fails to disappoint: it may have nothing new to offer but what is already known about the Jones’ movies is done with superlative sophistication and aplomb. Prof. Henry Jones Jnr (Ford) may be greyer and grizzlier around the gills than formerly but he is still fairly agile when required to leap across the tops of monoliths of secret storage boxes in a military facility; he may be greyer and grizzlier but he can still charm a former girlfriend (Allen) down the aisle at the end of the film. His dry, ironic sense of humour is still very evident.
One of the strengths of Spielberg’s action movies is the ironic humour:
this is particularly evident in the action stunts, which go wrong and
work against the idea of the heroic protagonist. In the first
contretemps, with Russian KGB agents, Jones is still impressively
ingenious in his methods of defence and attack: nevertheless, he and a
foiled opponent are still eventually impressed upon the front of a
rocket which propels itself along a dolly, to expire in the middle of
the desert. At this point our hero has almost expired as well. A young
protagonist attempts to descend into a mysterious pit, using an ancient
ladder: the steps instantly crumble so that he descends with the
swiftness of a roller coaster into the darkness beneath. This is
actually very amusing.
The villainous focus is on Col. Irina Spelko (Blanchett) whose well-articulated Russian accent adds a further dimension of evil to the character: “Three times I have received the Order of Lenin,” she asserts, with pride and a sequence of rolling, reverberating ‘r’ sounds. She focuses on psychic awareness; this may be a noble objective but her practical knowledge is virtually nil. She relies upon the capture of Indiana Jones to assist her with the skills required to capture the Crystal Skull, her goal. The crystal skull looks like a molded plastic gimmick from a Father Christmas lucky packet – extra large, of course. It does seem to contain interesting interior activity – flashing lights, sparks and veins, seemingly coursing with internal energy. The Crystal Skull is a focus for an interesting meld of cultural myths: Mayan and Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, to mention but two. No one seems to know much about it (including our hero), which lends an interesting dimension to the goal of capturing it. A competitor lurks in the wings, apart from Col. Spelko: ‘Mac’ (Winstone) appears to be a double agent. Initially, he is Jones’s partner and friend; thereafter, it would seem greed is his motivator and he is easily swayed to support the opposition – for a price. There is always the villainous, venal opportunist in the wings in this kind of film: the character who risks death (often foolishly) to cram his pockets with the extra gold booty before the roof caves in - or water gushes to drown subterranean caverns. |
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