Harrison Ford

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) is a bad third movie in the series – it’s about equal to the second one (Temple Of Doom, 1984) and has a lot less of the weird occult stuff although there is a strong religious angle to this one.

This time, Harrison Ford (who plays Indiana Jones as well as usual) is joined by Sean Connery (who plays his father) for a good chunk of the movie. Both their performances seem a bit laboured, not as crystal clear as they are when they’re performing at their best, but they still both put in decent work here.

Considering it’s the third of 5 movies in the saga, they’ve done a good job in maintaining a fairly decent standard although the original is probably still the best movie of them all since Harrison Ford is a bit younger there and his age is clearly catching up with him now. This time the movie is set in the WW2 era and is largely based in Germany, while featuring plenty of military personnel with credible accents, mannerisms and uniforms, etc.

This is more of an evolving adventure movie rather than a martial arts movie per say, and is more of a team endeavour than a single action hero job compared to most action hero movies featured on this site, but there’s plenty of fast action scenes including fighting with fists, whips, guns, tanks, planes, etc as you would expect from any Indiana Jones movie.

As with the other Indiana Jones movies so far, there’s a lack of potent female input, although Alison Doody does a fair job as the lead female with minimal screen time. She’s plays Elsa Schneider who keeps jumping back & forth from supporting Indy and his father, to double crossing them, to supporting them again. She’s probably still the third main character in this movie. She’s not unattractive, she’s just a bit basic and isn’t given a substantial role either.

Other supporting cast members do a fairly good job as usual in this series. They include River Phoenix in his late teens, who plays a younger version of Indiana at the start of the movie – he died of an overdose just four years after this movie was released, at the age of only 23. John Rhys-Davies also performs well as Sallah, Indy’s accomplice in the desert.

Some of the best parts of this movie include when Indy bumps into Adolf himself – great comedy there; plus when Indy and his father get on a German zeppelin airship – another outstanding comedy moment there; and when Indy finally meets the immortal guardian of the Holy Grail – that was a cool moment too.

Another nice touch to this movie was its scene in the ancient city of Petra, in Jordan. This place, according to some people (such as Dan Gibson, who has an interesting YouTube channel) was the true home of the religious prophets Ibrahim (Abraham) and Muhammad, and is allegedly still the direction that all the world’s oldest masjid prayer walls point to today. Can anyone prove him wrong? He seems to welcome it.

There are a couple of prolonged chaotic scenes with awful white-noisy music and sound effects in the first 20 minutes, making the fast-paced action quite irritating at times.

It gets a lot more interesting as the plot thickens about half an hour in.

It gets a bit gruesome for a moment as a pregnant snake is cut open and its babies slither out, while talking about human sacrifice, before serving up decapitated monkey heads for desert. Some people will understand the sick metaphors at work here. Shades of Marina Abramović. Nasty death & fire obsessed cult rituals led by horned men take place about an hour into the movie. There’s really not much archaeology in this one.

Overall though, the movie is not bad, the ending is decent, it didn’t just fade off like so many movies do after starting out well.

Harrison Ford does well as Indiana Jones, the star of the movie; as does his sidekick, an adopted Chinese boy called Short Round, played very well by Ke Huy Quan who almost stole the show!

Kate Capshaw also does alright as the lead female in this movie – her performance was pretty good and her level of appeal was just satisfactory for the role, which may have been the plan so as not to detract from the near slapstick adventure genre, although there’s probably a higher chance that the director Steven Spielberg thoroughly adored her since he eventually married her in 1991.

Also marketed since the year 2000 as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for consistency with other movies in the franchise.

This movie resembles an old-school James Bond movie, with a bit more of a slapstick vibe – several funny moments that might make you laugh for a just second – and an extra focus on archaeology and the occult. It’s not terribly dissimilar in genre to an old Star Wars movie (another franchise that Harrison Ford was involved in) minus of course the interplanetary travel and aliens. This movie also has a lot in common with the Tomb Raider movies although they’re a bit more modern in their action and special effects.

Harrison Ford does well as Indiana Jones aka Indy, the star and eventual namesake of this movie series. There’s no real martial artist vibe about him, but there are plenty of brief fight scenes throughout the movie, including empty handed fighting, edged weapon fighting and gun fighting, plus car chases, ships, planes, etc. The action is constantly ebbing & flowing, and Ford is consistently entertaining – there’s rarely a boring moment in this movie although there are some slightly uncomfortable scenes for those who are not a fan of horror, but to its credit, this movie doesn’t dwell on such moments nearly as much as most movies tend to these days, which makes it a far more digestible experience who those who just want smooth entertainment.

Karen Allen plays Marion Ravenwood, the lead female in this movie. She does a fair job. Doesn’t wow, bit of a chav, but not terribly bad an actress. Kind of matches the slightly slapstick genre and avoids overpowering the lead character or the script, so it kind of works.

Paul Freeman does quite well as Dr. René Belloq, one of the chief antagonists – the guy who always steals Indy’s treasure once he finds it.

Other supporting cast members generally do a decent job. The Nazi troops towards the back end of the movie were quite convincing, as were the indigenous tribesmen near the start.

All in all, I’m going to rate this an OK movie, considering the genre I’m seeking (martial arts packed smooth action hero movies). The action is fluid but the effects are a bit basic by modern movie standards. Still, it was a massive movie in its day, and spawned one of the highest grossing movie sagas of all time.