10 out of 10 people found this review helpful.
Snakes? I HATE snakes!
Date of Review: Jan 26, 2000
Raiders of the Lost Ark is a George Lucas-Stephen Spielberg salute to serials. In the early days of motion pictures, each performance of a movie would contain anyone or more of the following: Previews, Newsreels, a cartoon and/or the next chapter of the continuing story (aka serial).
In each episode, the hero or heroine woulc be hurtling towards an unescapable death at the end of the chapter. People, especially young children, would come back to the theatre each week to find out how death was avoided. Looking back, we can say it was corny and hyped, but as it was a new idea then and one of the few sources of entertainment in the (oh no!) days before television and computers, it had more merit than we can imagine.
Dr. Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is an adventurer-archeologist in the late 1930s who is an 'obtainer of rare antiquities". We first meet up with Dr. Jones as he is trying to find a temple and a hideous gold statue. It is a thrilling rollercoaster as he battles traitorous guides and the various traps in the temple. Armed with a revolver and a bullwhip, Jones manages to survive intact only to have the idol taken from him by an archeological adversary, Belloq (Paul Freeman).
Indiana, once again, barely escapes death to return to his duties teach archeology to college students. The transformation of the adventurer to the professor is only one of the tricks Speilberg plays. Indiana is met by Army Intelligence (an oxymoron if I ever heard of one) who wish him to go to Cairo and investigate one of Hitler's grand excavations which may prove to be the hiding place of the Lost Ark of the Convenant.
Okay, so we have a really cute leading man who teams up with a feisty, beautiful woman--Marion Ravenswood (gutsily played by Karen Allen) in a mile a minute adventure that features Biblical history, Egypt and its mysteries, a worthy adversary in Belloq, and fighting Nazis. What more could you ask for in a movie?
I will admit, this is one of my all-time favorites and I've seen it enough to quote dialoge ("Belloq's staff is too long", "They're digging in the wrong place!","I am the admiral of the sea, I am the ruler of the oommph. Bad dates") and yet I will cheerfully drop whatever I am doing to watch again.
The movie may be too violent for young children and, as always, if in doubt either watch it first or watch it with your kids. In fact, rent all three Indiana Jones films for that perfect snowy night and just binge. The action is nearly non-stop, the dialogue witty, and the story complex. And come on, don't we occassionally need movies where you just know the good guy will win in the end? That is, if he escapes the bad guys and thwarts death at every turn.
