STUDIO: Paramount
RELEASE DATE: May 22, 2008
STARRING: Harrison Ford, Cate Blanchett, Karen Allen, Shia LaBeouf, Ray Winstone, John Hurt, and Jim Broadbent
WRITTEN BY: David Koepp
DIRECTED BY: Steven Spielberg
GENRE: Action
RATING: PG-13

Everyone has their "desert island movies" and Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of mine. It's near the top of the list of flicks that I could watch repeatedly and have. I've seen it several times over the years, have a massive adoration for it, and when I was lucky enough to see a remastered print on the big screen a couple of years ago, it brought out the kid in me again. The two films that followed formed a trilogy that I would take above all others if I could only have one (yes, above Star Wars and even LOTR, although it would be a very tough choice between Hobbits and Nazis). You might think that my love for all things Indy would make me the prime target for Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but, honestly, when the lights went down at the press screening this week, I was terrified.

Just as no one wants to see their favorite athlete come back and get his ass kicked in the big game, the potential for failure with Crystal Skull was immeasurable. Even the people who made it would openly admit that it's a little late in their cinematic careers for a whip-cracking action movie. Would Harrison Ford look too old for the action to be believable? Would Spielberg still know how to pace an old-fashioned sequence like he did in the '80s? Could the film actually tarnish the legacy of the original series like many feel the Star Wars prequels have? The lights were barely down on my screening before my fears started to vanish, to be replaced by an ear-to-ear grin. From the opening frames, Crystal Skull proves that if you get Janusz Kaminski behind the camera, John Williams composing the score, and one of the best directors of all time helming the franchise, things are going to click. The film feels "right" before Ford even grabs the legendary hat.

The "clicking" continues through the opening twenty minutes, which almost feel like the kind of pre-movie serial adventure that inspired the Indiana Jones franchise in the first place. Indy and his buddy 'Mac' (Ray Winstone) are pulled from a trunk at Russian gunpoint and introduced to arguably the best Indy villain yet, Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett). Spalko is a brilliant creation, a sexy and tough villain who feels like she parachuted into the plot from a Connery-era Bond film. She holds Indy and Mac at gunpoint until they lead her and her Commie buddies to a crate in Hangar 51 that clearly contains something not of this world. After his buddy turns on him, Dr. Jones fights his way to freedom through not just gunfire, rocket launches, and angry Russians, but an actual nuclear explosion. It's a riveting opening act, the kind that old-fashioned movies are made of and if it doesn't work for you, nothing else in the movie possibly will.

From there, Crystal Skull settles into its main plot, as Jones goes home to find himself a target of the government for what went down in that mysterious hangar. The old Indy had to battle Nazis, but the new one has to fight not just enemies abroad but blacklisting at home. After being suspended, Dr. Henry Jones Jr. has the time to kill when the impetuous 'Mutt' Williams (Shia LaBeouf) comes to town asking for his help. The greaser who carries a switchblade and a comb and couldn't live without either needs Indy's help to find his father figure, Professor 'Ox' Oxley (John Hurt). Almost immediately, Mutt and Indy are chased by the Russkies and, in one of several brilliant nods to the changing times, Spielberg trades the classic horse chase for one with our heroes on Mutt's motorcycle. Before you know it, the two different eras of adventurer are down in Peru, searching for the famous Crystal Skull of Akator, something that may not only prove that those classic creatures from outer space that have long inspired Spielberg actually exist but be the bridge to make contact with them. In the rainforests, Indy and Mutt pick up a mentally-deranged 'Ox' (when you need a crazy British character, call John Hurt), run into 'Mac' again, find themselves chased by Spalko and her men, and meet up with someone closer to both of them than either knows, Marion Ravenwood (a charmingly tomboy-ish Karen Allen, reprising her role from the original film and making you wonder where she's been for the last quarter-century).

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull not only feels like an attempt to rekindle a lost movie magic but to tie together themes that have been a part of Spielberg's work for over three decades. It's not giving much away (you see an alien corpse in the first few minutes) to tell you that extra-terrestrials play a major role in Crystal Skull and it's fascinating to think that Spielberg is almost commenting on his own filmography trying to tie together the Indy movies with Close Encounters, A.I., and E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial.

But Spielberg never loses sight of what made the first three Indy movies work. The repartee, the foreign baddies, the expertly staged action set-pieces - they're all there, they've just changed a little bit with the times. Horses have been replaced by motorcycles and whips have been replaced by switchblades. But, as the final shot indicates, Indiana's not quite ready to be replaced by anyone and that's the kind of news that comforts an old-fashioned movie goer like this one more than he possibly thought it could. There's an old-fashioned sensibility that Spielberg, screenwriter David Koepp, Lucas, Ford, and the rest of the team bring to Crystal Skull that you don't often see executed this seamlessly. I wish there was a little more joy in Ford's performance, especially in the first act, but when he, Allen, and LaBeouf start really going in the second half of the film, it's almost impossible not to smile. And if you don't enjoy the main action set piece - a multi-leveled chase through the rainforest - you just don't like action movies.

Is it possible that Crystal Skull could live up to the pedestal set by the first three movies considering that two decades have passed since The Last Crusade? I doubt it, but it should be noted that there are a few things that Spielberg and his team do wrong that don't help the cause. One of the charms of those first three movies is their reliance on practical effects and when Crystal Skull goes CGI, which it thankfully doesn't do that often, it feels out of place. Do we really need CGI monkeys? It also feels like David Koepp's script needed one more pass just to take away a little bit of the obvious, on-the-nose beats and add a shade of subtlety that's missing from the final product. Every joke and beat from Ox's crazy banter to the repartee between Mutt, Marion, and Indy feels like it goes on maybe one line too long. It's a minor complaint, but when you're comparing a film to the original Indy trilogy, a minor complaint is all it takes for it to come up just barely short.

And that's really what we need to keep in perspective. Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull may not live up to the legend of the first three movies, but it is likely to be the best action/adventure movie of the season. Spielberg and his team simply know how to do this kind of thing better than most of the filmmakers inspired by them who are trying to do it today. I'd take a Crystal Skull caliber movie every summer for another twenty years over many of the movies inspired by the man with the whip. And if I was the right age, it might even be a desert island movie. No one's more surprised than me, an Indy fanboy who once thought that a fourth movie was a horrible idea and now would wait in line for a fifth.