Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)

After the dark-toned journey of Temple of Doom, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg bring the beloved Indiana Jones back into the light for one last hurrah. Featuring plenty of girls, guns and globetrotting, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade pulls out all the stops and recreates most of the magic that captivated audiences in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Trilogies are oftentimes fickle things. The original is almost always the best, the second installment usually disappoints to a degree (though there are exceptions), and the third chapter can go either way. This film closes out the Indiana Jones trilogy in the best way possible- returning to its roots.

Last Crusade recaptures the light-hearted heroic swagger of old adventure serials that made Raiders of the Lost Ark so fun. Indy’s got his sass back and Harrison Ford oozes charm from start to finish. The Nazis are back as the chief antagonists, seeking an artifact with great power. Said artifact is the fabled Holy Grail; something that Western audiences can easily wrap their heads around. To cap it all off, Indy travels to several gorgeous foreign locales, including Venice, Berlin and Petra (serving as the exterior of the fictional resting place of the Grail).

There are enough differences to prevent this film from feeling too formulaic though. The opening segment once again shows Indy chasing after an artifact but it occurs in Indy’s youth. This opening segment serves a dual function- it shows how Indy first got into high-stakes artifact chasing adventures and it also sets up his relationship with his father, who plays an important part in the film. The addition of Henry Jones is a welcome breath of fresh air as well. Instead of flirting with a woman or bossing around a kid, Indy has met his equal in his father. Sean Connery and Harrison Ford have brilliant chemistry on the screen.

While I normally get annoyed when father-son conflict resolution is injected into an otherwise good plot, I didn’t mind it one bit during this film. Indy’s issues with his father are legitimate but handled with enough light-heartedness that it never becomes the kind of thing you roll your eyes at. Their bonding never seems forced, which makes it more effective, I think.

One of the problems with Temple of Doom was that its action sequences sometimes went a bit too far over the top. Perhaps this was to make up for the dark tone. Fortunately nothing in Last Crusade approaches the level of silliness as the mine cart chase or the airplane/raft escape. The action pieces are spectacular but don’t steal the show. The focus remains the characters that we love to root for.

Some of the special effects in this film show their age quite a bit but they were pretty good when the film first came out. Sometimes this is a hard issue to see around, particularly with older movies where the bluescreen work is painfully obvious. Having grown up with movies from the 80s and 90s though, it is pretty easy for me to gauge the quality of the effects based on my knowledge of other films from the same era. So Last Crusade does pretty well in that department, despite looking silly 20 years later.

Reviews for Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade were somewhat mixed when it was released but it has been embraced by fans of the original. Not everyone prefers this third installment to Temple of Doom but most of us Indy fans do. I’m a sucker for this film. In some ways it is more fun than Raiders but, when you get right down to it, the original set the tone for the series. This film saw the Indy series seemingly finish on a high note that lasted for 19 years. Last Crusade redeems the series from Temple’s bleakness by borrowing just enough of what Raiders did right with a helping of originality mixed in.

RATING: 4 out of 5