Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull truly does justice to the franchise as it catches us up with the whip smart fedora fancier two decades after his last known adventure. We join Indy in 1957 authentically revisited via a variety of cold war paranoia like the red menace, A-bomb tests, Roswell and area 51. A crystal skull with other worldly properties becomes the prize for Irina Spalko a Russian doctor played by Cate Blanchett with a convincing but intermittent accent. She constantly forces Dr. Jones to help in her quest but he has a different agenda thanks to information from Shia LaBeouf as Mutt Williams channelling Marlon Brando in The Wild One. He’s the son of Marion Ravenwood a familiar paramour reprised by Karen Allen and it shouldn’t take long to figure out the relationship between Mutt and Indiana although it certainly takes the brilliant archaeologist a while. Their prime mission turns out to be returning the skull to its rightful place somewhere among ancient Mayan ruins in South America. Along the way he’s sometimes helped and sometimes betrayed by Ray Winstone playing ‘Mac’ George McHale. One might wonder with the natural aging of the principal star if the premise might not be tired as the average person of that age. Not to worry, Harrison Ford is as trim and agile as ever which is necessary since the action again is relentless – in the first 20 minutes alone Indiana fends off a platoon of Ruskies, escapes captivity on a rocket sled and survives a nuclear explosion. Those long jonesin’ for more Jones won’t be disappointed.