Indiana Jones 4: And the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008)

Summary: 1957 Indy is sacked by his university due to FBI interest in him after his involvement with a Russian hit squad led by the villainous Irina Spalko when he was forced to recover the body of an alien at Hanger 51. When on a train he is flagged down by Mutt Williams whose mother had been kidnapped in Peru together with Professor Harold Oxley who had found a crystal skull. Mutt and Indy travel to Peru and go on the trail of the crystal skull and the kidnapped Americans, and soon find themselves once more battling the KGB soldiers, sometimes in captivity and sometimes on the run but eventually the drama centres on an Aztec temple in the jungle where revelations await.

Content: No sex or nudity and just a bit of social drinking. Many set pieces starting off with the search in Hanger 51, for the alien body. It is magnetic which has fun results. Indy escapes into a town which is a target for an atomic bomb test, Controversially he survives by hiding in a fridge. Later there is a car/motor cycle chase around a university campus. Travel is indicated by lines on a map – saves a lot of time. In Peru Indy and Mutt are attacked by ninja Aztecs and they have a prolonged car, truck and DKW chase which ends up with some precipitous falls over waterfalls. There is a scene of people being eaten by giant ants. There is a bit of romance between Indy and Mutt’s mother, and there is evidence that they had once been lovers in the past.

A View: Some of the numbers in relation to this movie are really impressive. It made a lot of money and on IMDb its approval rating has been set by 450 thousand people, but no-one liked it that much and it won the Razzie for Worst  Prequel, Remake or Sequel. I have only seen on other of the series separated from this one by about 20 years. I would have thought it does pretty well what you would expect of it, but as has become common in action films the action in each of the set pieces goes on for far too long. So whether you are a fan on Indiana Jones or not, if you enjoy mindless action this could be for you.

There have been a number of Steven Spielberg films reviewed on this site three outstanding ones are: Jurassic Park, Saving Private Ryan and his very first film, Duel.