INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE (1989)
Tagline: Have the adventure of your life keeping up with the Joneses
(Action, Adventure, This is not Archeology) [PG-13]
He's got a two-day head start on you, which is more than he needs. Brody's got friends in every town and village from here to the Sudan, he speaks a dozen languages, knows every local custom, he'll blend in, disappear, you'll never see him again. With any luck, he's got the grail already.
In this one, Dr. Henry Jones goes missing while looking for the Holy Grail. The event draws Indiana Jones into the chase of a lifetime, fighting off the Nazis, a religious order that doesn’t want the Grail found, and his own doubts to find the un-findable.
There is nearly unanimous thought in critical circles that this is the best of the INDIANA JONES series even topping RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK. I am not in agreement with that, even though it’s been pointed out that RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK might have ended exactly the same even if Indy hadn’t shown up at all. For me, the biggest issue here is the middle section. The opening sequence is the best in the series next to the opening for INDIANA JONES AND THE TEMPLE OF DOOM. We do get some other great scenes, but the opening with River Phoenix as “young” Indiana Jones was phenomenal. Just that scene made it feel like this series had promise far beyond Harrison Ford with a possible series of movies involving his younger self played by River. Alas, it wasn’t to be, at least not to date, but that is the kind of imagination that the opening sequence stirred among us kids.
The score for all of the INDIANA JONES movies is always iconic and Stephen Spielberg’s direction is sensational. I also loved the pacing in this one although the middle was an issue as I alluded to earlier. I can’t really pinpoint why I felt it was off, but it could be as simple as weighing it against that incredible opening, then contrasting it to the crazy “tank versus horses” third act.
Acting wise we got some of the best performances of the entire series. Alison Doody (A VIEW TO A KILL) was pretty solid as the duplicitous Elsa, but I could never play someone even remotely close to a Nazi. Then again, no one is hiring me to act, so that isn’t a real danger here anyway. John Rhys-Davies (FIREWALKER) is in his prime in this as Sallah. Sean Connery (HIGHLANDER) is outstanding as Indiana Jone's father and the rest of the cast is simply superb.
By today’s standards, some of the effects are a bit cheesy, especially when it comes to the invisible bridge scene, but overall they did an impeccable job overall and to this day this film still stands as the go-to-gold standard of action-adventure movies. I also thought it was pretty crazy that they used real rats that had to be bred just for the sewer scenes. They did have a bunch of mechanical rats also, but wow. The stuff they had to do in the 80s to make movies was just really intense.
Overall this is a solid 6 out of 7. I think I would have liked to have seen the middle section bumped up on the action and done less on the Elsa side story. Scoring what we got though, I can’t give this one a perfect score. It was very close though.
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