Archaeology 201?-Harrison Ford’s “Indiana Jones And The Valley Of The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull” (2008)-A Film Review

DVD Review

By Movie Critic Sam Lowell

Indiana Jones And The Valley Of The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, starring who else Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Cate Blanchett, directed by Steven Spielberg, 2008

I sometimes make no pretense to review films series, or what has turn into film series by default, in order. Rather it is most times happenstance. Take the film under review, Indiana Jones and the Valley of the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the fourth in the Steven Spielberg- directed series. I had recently been looking for a night’s respite with an action film and so grabbed a known commodity- a Harrison Ford effort in the Indiana Jones series. Since I had many years ago seem the first two in the series I picked up Indiana Jones: The Last Crusade for that purpose. Having liked that film and simply as a matter of completeness I later grabbed this production. Talk about hubris, hubris on my part, to match that of the great archeologist-warrior Jones.

In that previous Indiana effort I noted in my review of that film that Indiana Jones, the well-known fictional archeologist-warrior, and central character who was the scourge of all the ruins rip-off artists of the 1930s whether they were politically-driven Nazis or just run of the mill bandits and grave-robbers apparently made it hard for professional archeologists who came of age after World War II. That was my take on the matter in any case after viewing the film and remembering the late Professor Hobart Stanley whom I took a course in archeology with when I was a college student interested in ancient Greece and Rome. The good professor seemed if I recall to have been hard-pressed to get his notes untangled much less face down the assorted vermin whose antics plague those who seek knowledge from the past. So everybody should take advantage of the now four-film Indiana Jones series to see what it was like if only on the big screen when archeologists dug for real. (That four film series may be getting an addition if a reviewer of a biography I read about the director of this film, Steven Spielberg, is correct).        

      

If guarding against desecration of ancient ruins and assorted other items of historical interest in the 1930s meant taking dead aim at the Nazi scum then in the 1950s, the time of the action of this film necessary since it had been some 19years since the last Indy film, the nefarious enemy of humankind’s creations were the Soviets, the commies, the bad guys of our childhood dreams here in America during the red scare Cold War night. Add into the red menace mix a highly symbolic worry about aliens (from outer space not as today from other countries on this good green earth) and you have an idea about what this plotline will uncover.         

Word had it that the Reds were interested in some magic realism crystal skulls which had what would be very useful telepathic qualities. The question where they were and why had they been placed there and for Indiana, I don’t have to say played by Harrison Ford do I, and his pals (although not his father who by then would have passed away or been let out to pasture) to beat the damn Ruskkies to). Along the way to the end game Indy is double-crossed by his co-worker, had sold out to the red menace like some latter-day Kim Philby, runs into his son by his old-time companion, runs into that companion herself, played by Karen Allen, runs into an evil Soviet scientist, played by Cate Blanchett, and her evil entourage which gives Indy fits before being put down.      

  

The most interesting part though if you think about the matter is that once the dust settled and the Soviets done in, the twelve thousand escapades to get to the valley and to the treasured items, the material, the skulls had been left by aliens (in a flying saucer, the preferred shape of vehicle for 1950s aliens to let you know that they were indeed aliens from outer space and not some earthly refugees), who turned out to as interested in archeology as Indy and his crew. Professor Stanley would have appreciated that. The place of this film in the series is definitely below The Last Crusade if for no other reason than the interplay between Indy and his Pop (played by Sean Connery)