Super heroes have always had a mesmerizing effect on movie-goers for decades now. What perhaps makes them so lovable is their very believable human nature coupled with extraordinary abilities to draw on and in the process, root out the evil from the world. Indiana Jones may not be a super hero (in the sense that he has no super powers) but remains one of the most successful “serial heroes” in Hollywood after churning out 3 major blockbusters - something only James Bond has been able to do with more success and regularity.
Directed by the incomparable Steven Spielberg and produced and co-written by George Lucas, the movie starred Harrison Ford as the archaeologist cum professor, Dr. Indiana Jones and had Sir Sean Connery playing his father. Made as the third and final installment of the “Indy” Jones series, it had all the ingredients of the earlier two movies, albeit with higher dosages.
The Story
The movie begins by with a young Dr. Jones going off on one of his initial adventures and shows how he got the scar on his chin (which Ford always had), where he got his favourite accessories- the trademark hat and bullwhip and how his fear of snakes came about.
The story then moves more than 20 years forward to 1938 when Dr. Henry Jones (Connery) is working for a wealthy artifact collector to try and find the biblical “Holy Grail” which is supposed to give a healthy and long life to whoever drinks water from it. Junior Jones (Ford) is unwittingly drawn into the hunt when his father goes missing all of a sudden and teams up with Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliot) and Dr. Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody). They manage to trace and rescue Jones Sr. after a series of adventures and all of them together commence the search for the Holy Grail. Also on the trail are Indy’s old pals - the Nazis, and from then on, it’s a question of who reaches the grail first.
What unfold next are adventures galore. Upon finding his father and rescuing him from Germany, Indy battles an entire battalion of Nazis, pursues a tank on horseback (this sequence reportedly took 2 weeks to film), hitches a free ride aboard a “Zeppelin” (air ship) and indulges in a thrilling boat chase. The best scene is probably the one in which the German soldiers are destroying anti-Nazi books. As Indy tries to run away from Berlin with the crucial book of maps that contains the location of the Grail, he comes face to face with “The Fuhrer” himself! Their eyes lock for a few brief seconds and before Indy can so much as recover from his chock and utter a word, Hitler snatches the book out of Indy’s hand and gives his autograph on the very page that contains the map of the Holy Grail!
The climax is set in a typical Spielbergian style and contains a few surprises too. Here again, typical of the other Indy movies (“Raiders of the Lost Ark” and “Temple of Doom”) there are the usual explosions, chasm jumps and caves folding in.
Thus Spake Cheeky
The movie strengthens Spielberg’s talent as a film-maker with an immense talent for a rapid and exciting storytelling. He has proven it time and again that he has what it takes a director to keep the audience riveter to their seats with gasps emanating out of their mouths every second. There isn’t too much here by way of story but Spielberg more than makes up for it with by throwing in a high degree of action, comedy and adventure. All this is ably backed up by a maniacal obsession for technical finesse and wizardry.
The movie well and truly belongs to Ford and Connery. Here are two brilliant actors of high caliber and to watch them on screen pitting their talents against each other is a sheer delight for any connoisseur of movies. The dialogues between them are crisp and their scenes crackle with abundance of humour. Connery plays a bumbling but worldly wise dad and Ford plays his son who wants to desperately prove that he has grown up and would not prefer being called “Junior” any longer. It’s a pity that we have only one movie with these two great actors together.
The movie was released in 1989 and garnered the Oscar awards for Best Visual Effects and Sound Effects Editing. It was also nominated for the Best Original Music Score and Best Sound.
In my opinion, this was the best of the three Indy movies. While Raiders of the Lost Ark was also brilliant, it was way too mechanical like “The Mummy”. “The Temple of Doom” (which had our very own Gulshan Grover in a small but important role), on the other hand was a hit but didn’t have the same kind of charm nor did it evoke the same kind of interest among the audience. If you’re the kind who freaks out on action movies, Don’t miss this one for anything in your life!