(Cert 12A)
It's a title that no one here in Cannes can quite remember off the top of their heads, preferring to say simply "IJ4" - and generally adding a whoop of excitement. It's no exaggeration to say that Cannes has gone Indy crazy, with delegates queueing for hours to get in before the show began at lunchtime. Many threw their cinephile dignity to the winds, attempting to vault the barriers and rush in for the best seats, and having to be hauled back by one of the grey-suited entry police after an undignified scramble. An appearance by Steven Spielberg at the back of the packed auditorium, accompanied by festival director Thierry Frémaux, caused among us a veritable Mexican wave of head-turning and neck-craning. There's plenty going on in this movie, with one or two tremendous stunts and some very nasty giant ants. It also steers clear of the dusky-foreigner stereotypes that got the second Indiana Jones picture into hot water. But despite the genuine excitement, and one blinding flash of the old genius, this new Indy film looks like it's going through the motions. The third film was called Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, after all; perhaps, like the first Star Wars film, that will need a change of title, with the word "penultimate" added to all new DVDs.
Unlike the calamitous Star Wars prequel trilogy, this film doesn't trash our treasured memories, but it doesn't add anything either. In fact, it seems like a very, very long extra ending, like the six or seven Peter Jackson tacked on to his The Return of the King.
The idea is that Indy is now plying his trade in the cold war of the 1950s. After discovering a Soviet plot to infiltrate an Area 51-style US military base, with a highly classified alien corpse, he witnesses a nuclear test and is then confronted with the Russian villainness Irina Spalko, played by Cate Blanchett looking like a very, very attractive and taller version of Rosa Klebb. She wants to get her nasty Commie hands on the mythical crystal skull of a pre-Mayan civilisation, and return it to its legendary tomb deep in the South American jungle, created by Erich Von Daniken-style space invaders - and this will give the USSR supreme mystical powers over the free world. But not if Indy gets there first, and he's accompanied by his unreliable Brit pal Mac (Ray Winstone), addled academic Professer Oxley (John Hurt), new young sidekick Mutt (Shia Labeouf) and it's nice to see a return from Indy's first and feistiest love, Marion (Karen Allen)... [article continues]
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
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Summary: Set in the 1950s, the now middle-aged intrepid archaeologist takes on Soviet agents in a race for a priceless artefact.
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