Right now I'm onto the 3rd part of my Indiana Jones entries and this one is about Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, the 3rd entry in the Jones adventures, so let's have a closer look at it.
So so so, with my usual plot analysis (yep its the same old tired format on this page, but I like it, I think!) the film begins all the way back in 1912 when Indiana Jones was just a teenager (played by the late River Phoenix). Indy is on a boy scout trip with his class in Utah, where they break off into pairs look around the mountains. Indy goes into one of the caves and finds some robbers who are digging for artefacts, and they find a cross that belonged to Coronado, a historic Spanish explorer. Indy, believing its an important artefact that belongs in a museum, nabs the cross while the robbers aren't looking, and he flees as the robbers chase him. Indy during the chase, makes his way onto a circus train, and after a close quarters fight with the robbers, he manages to escape with the cross (courtesy of a magic trap door) and runs home. Once Indy get's back home, the robbers call the local sheriff who comes around and forces him to give the cross back. The leader of the robbers, who dresses similar to how Indy dresses in the future, is impressed with his grit, and gives him his fedora. The film the cuts to 1938 where Indy is on a ship fighting to get back the Coronado cross from its acquired owner (the man whom it was given to back in 1912) in admist the fight, the ship is blown up and Indy escapes with the cross. Indy makes it back to his college in America and gives Marcus (Denholm Elliot) the cross to place in his museum.
As Indy leaves the college he is approached by some men who take him to meet an antiques collector, Walter Donovan, who tells him that he is on a quest to find the holy grail, and that Indy's father, Henry Jones Sr (Sean Connery) who was helping them with their research, has gone missing. Indy checks out his dad's home, but doesn't find him, but he remembers that he was sent a parcel, delivered to his office, which he opens and finds his dad's diary on the Holy Grail. Indy then agrees to go to Venice with Marcus to meet up with Henry's Austrian colleague, Dr Elsa Schneider (Alison Doody). They go to a library where Henry was last seen, and Indy discovers from the clues in his father's diary that the tomb of one of the knights of the holy crusade is buried underneath the library. Indy and Elsa go underneath the library into the catacombs and eventually find the tomb that Indy spoke of, and inside there is the skeleton remains of the knight, who has a shield, which Indy uses his crayon paper rubbing of the shield (which is only half complete) to complete the shield image. However as he does this, some men come down into the catacombs and set fire to the water (which is laced with petrolium). Indy and Elsa managed to escape the catacombs to the surface and are given chase by the men on a speedboat, Indy eventually manages to fight one of them and forces him to answer why they are trying to kill him. The man, Kazim, tells Indy that he is a member of the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword, who are determined to keep the secret of the holy grail safe, Indy also asks if he knows where his father is being held, which the man eventually obliges, telling him that Henry is being held in a castle on the Austrian border.
Indy travels to the castle with Elsa, he manages to get inside and finds Henry (by crashing into his room using his whip to swing in through the windows!) who tells him that he sent his diary back to him so that it wouldn't fall into the Nazis hands, but he is appalled when he realises that Indy brought it with him. However Indy is taken in by a ruse set by Elsa who appears to be held hostage by a German colonel, Ernst Vogel (Michael Byrne), but its revealed she is working with the Nazis as is Donovan, who are basically there to get the grail diary. Indy and Henry are soon tied up and left in the castle, while Donovan and Elsa leave. In an effort to escape the castle, Henry tries to use Indy's lighter to burn through the ropes, but he accidentally drops it, and it sets fire to the floor and soon the whole room. Indy and Henry eventually escape the castle and are given chase by the Nazis on a motorbike, but they evade them, afterward Henry explains to Indy that they need to get the diary back as it has vital information to help them find the Grail. Marcus meanwhile, who is hopelessly lost in Turkey, meets up with Sallah (John Ryhs Davies), and he has the grail map, which gives instructions to its location, but the Nazis soon capture Marcus.
Indy and Henry then go to Berlin to get the diary back, which Indy (dressed as a Nazi officer) takes them Elsa. As they try to leave Germany in a zeppelin, but they are soon intercepted by the Nazis again, and Indy and Henry escape in a small plane attached underneath the Zeppelin. After a dogfight with Nazi planes, Indy and Henry managed to land the plane and thwart the other plane, by Henry shooing a lot of birds with his umbrella, who fly right into the path of plane, causing the pilot to crash it into a mountain. Soon after Indy and Henry travel to Hatay and rejoin with Sallah, as they go after Marcus, who is being held captive by the Nazis. Indy again soon gets involved in a fight in the desert with a Nazi convoy, as he takes on the Nazis in a tank (where Marcus is being held), and he rescues Marcus and Henry, and dives off the tank just before it goes over a cliff, killing Vogel. The men eventually make their final journey to the canyon of the crescent moon, the location of the grail. Indy, Henry, Marcus and Sallah enter the temple and find Donovan is using volunteers to try and get pass the traps set to reach the grail, but they are all killed. Indy and the others are soon captured by Donovan's men, and Donovan forces Indy to get the grail, by shooting Henry in the chest. Indy now must use his father's grail diary in order to traverse the traps ahead of him in order to reach the grail and try and save his dad's life.
The Last Crusade for me is easily the second best film in the Indiana Jones adventures, and after the breakneck pace and the gruesomeness of the Temple of Doom, the Last Crusade thankfully get's back to the tone of Raiders. Its also great that we are reunited with Marcus and Sallah from Raiders as well, who both help to keep the tone from the original as well. Last Crusade is also very funny and witty in various scenes, as the screenplay was written by Jeffrey Boam (who wrote the screenplay for Lethal Weapon 2 that same year) there plenty of amusing lines of dialogue throughout. Its also a nice touch that we also get to see a bit of Indy's past, when we see him in the past as a young teenager, who makes the gutsy decision to steal the Coronado cross and try and escape from the group of robbers who dug it up in the caves. But one of the things that also helps make Last Crusade work so well is the relationship between Indy and his father, Henry, as Indy grew up, Henry was so emroiled his work over the Holy Grail, that he had little or no time for his son at all. And there is nice embittered tone from Indy, who clearly is not happy with the memories he had of his father in the past, and always refers to him in a negative light when he talks about him to Marcus, Elsa or anyone else in the film. But at the same time when he meets up with his dad again, he does still stand to the attention of his dad, when Henry says something, Indy says "Yes, sir!".
In performance terms there is a lot to appreciate in the Last Crusade, and Sean Connery, as unlikely a choice as he could be for the part of Indy's father, works brilliantly well in the role, despite the fact in reality Connery is only 12 years older than Harrison Ford! But Connery plays Henry just right, with an almost dismissive sense of authority over Indy, and as a man who is so obssessed with his work, but despite all that they still share a couple of nice moments. One of them is where he shoos the birds on the beach to force the Nazi plane to crash, and Indy looks at his father as he walks by, he give a smile of admiration and pride for him. I also like the moment where they are on the zeppelin and Indy says how much he regretted how lonely it was for them both when he grew up, and that Henry was more interested in his work than him, and that they never spoke to each other. Henry then says "OK, I'm here now, what do you want to talk about??" and Indy looks speechless and laughs saying "I can't think of anything!", and Henry replies "well, what are you complaining about??!". Connery also get's one of the funniest lines in the film when Indy asks Henry how he knew that Elsa was a Nazi, and Henry replies "she talks in her sleep!". Harrison Ford also again as Indy is great once more, and by then he had grown so comfortably into the part, and he has several funny moments in the film, one of which is the ridiculous Scottish accent he puts on when he enters the castle to find his dad, pretending to be a Scottish lord. I also like the line where Indy and Henry are being attacked by the Nazi plane, and it dawns on Henry "these people are trying to kill us!" and Indy yells "I KNOW DAD!", and Henry says "its a new experience for me!", to which Indy replies "it happens to me all the time!".
The supporting cast are also excellent, with Julian Glover putting in a fine performance as the devious collector, Donovan, who's greed to find the Grail overtakes him and in the end it costs him his life, as he drinks from the wrong cup and gruesomely ages to death in front of Indy and Elsa's eyes. This prompts one of the best lines in the film from the knight who says "he chose.....poorly" after Donovan bites the proverbial dust. Alison Doody is also good in her role as Elsa Schneider, the conniving scholar working with the Nazis, and she has some nice moments of chemistry with Harrison Ford, especially when they argue just before they lock in a passionate kiss, and she says "how dare you kiss me!" and she kisses him back. Denholm Elliott also makes another entertaining return as Marcus Brody, except this time rather than coming across as an intelligent capable scholar, he is more made out to be a bumlbing fool. Or rather its more just that Marcus is simply out of his depth in the situation as he is not a field man like Indy is, and Indy also recalls how Marcus one time got lost in his own museum. Which pre-empts another funny scene where Indy says before hand to the Nazis that they will never find Marcus, and he can speak a dozen languages, as he can blend in and disappear into any place, and we cut to Marcus who is hopelessly lost in Hatay and he says "can anyone speak English here???". John Ryhs Davies is also once again very good as Sallah, and he reprises the role nicely, and his funniest moment comes when he is trying to tell a slow witted Marcus to run away from a couple of Nazi officers, as they ask for their papers, and Sallah produces a newspaper "Oh yes papers here, the Egyptian mail, got it this morning!".
Once again technically wise, the Last Crusade looks great as Douglas Slocombe once again provides the cinematography, which looks stunning as ever, with the vistas in Hatay and the opening sequences in Utah. John Williams again provides another enjoyable score, which has the perfect mixture of fun, drama, suspense to it. Spielberg also once again does an excellent job with the direction, and he keeps the pace of the film moving quite nicely, although you could possibly argue that there is less action in the film than there should have been. And also perhaps at times the tone of the film is overtly comical, but I think Spielberg helps keep it just about right enough to keep it in tone with the original in Raiders. But what Last Crusade has got going for it is that it has toned down the more gruesome aspects of what we had seen in Temple of Doom and from that point of view, its an easier and more fun watch than its predecessor.
Sooo that's it for the Last Crusade, which is definitely one of my favourites from the series so far, next up is part four, with the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
Till the next one that's it for now.
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