Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Review

After the complaints about Temple of Doom, Spielberg went back to the formula of Raiders and made it lighter, and the recycling is plain: Nazis again, a sacred relic again, Marcus Brody and Sallah back and demoted to comic relief. The set pieces are superb anyway. The circus train prologue, with River Phoenix as a teenage Indy acquiring the whip, the scar and the hat in one breathless chase, the boat chase in Venice and the tank battle in the desert are staged with the geographic clarity that is Spielberg's real signature, and Douglas Slocombe lights them in warm, saturated colour.

What makes it more than a rerun is Sean Connery, only twelve years older than Harrison Ford and cast as his father anyway: a fussy medievalist who calls his son Junior and cannot understand why the boy makes such a mess of things. Tom Stoppard polished most of the dialogue without credit, and their bickering is the funniest writing in the series. The Grail trials at the climax also make the hero choose something, which Raiders never did. Jonathan Rosenbaum called it soulless and Peter Travers called it the wittiest Indy of them all. Travers was closer.