Among the most exhausting fun machine action movies of the 80s. Harrison Ford fights gangsters in Shanghai and then punches out child-enslaving killer cult members in India. Along the way is a Busby Berkeley-style musical number in a Chinese night club, a passageway full of insects, more ancient world death traps, a kiddie comic relief sidekick, death by lava, death by rock pulverizer, death by alligator, a great action scene on a rickety bridge and chilled monkey brains. It’s so rollercoaster-paced that when the action moves to actual rollercoasters (or speeding underground mining cars), it’s no more relentless than most of the rest of the film.
It’s my own favorite Indiana Jones movie, though it’s the most controversial of the first three. Even Steven Spielberg and George Lucas have retrospectively criticized it for its dark tone and harsh violence which culminates in a nightmarish human sacrifice scene that made kids cry in the theater. It eventually became one of the influences for the MPAA’s PG-13 rating.
Still, for some of us who grew up endlessly watching movies in the 80s (and I’ve definitely got that disease—cough, cough), the whole original Indiana Jones trilogy are good times. I don’t know if it’s nostalgia or something that simply dissolved itself in our blood a long time ago and has effected us ever since. These films renewed for a young generation the old-fashioned adventure story set in exotic locales and in an equally exotic past. No realism necessary. Just a cozy place to slip into a dream.