| Genre: | Action |
| Year: | 1981 |
| Rating: | PG |
| Length: | 115mins |
| Country: | USA |
| Cast: | Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Anthony Higgins, Wolf Kahler,
Ronald Lacey, Alfred Molina, John Rhys-Davies, Harrison Ford |
| Awards: | Academy Awards: Best Sound, Best Art Direction, Special Achievement, Best Visual Effects, Best Production Design/Art Direction. |
Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) is not your ordinary, run-of-the-mill archeologist. We first we see him in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indy is somewhere in the Peruvian jungle in 1936, running a booby-trapped gauntlet (complete with outsized rolling boulder) to fetch a solid gold idol. He loses this artifact to his chief rival, a loyal Nazi named Belloq (Paul Freeman), who then prepares to kill our hero. In the first of many serial-like escapes, Indy manages to elude Belloq by hopping into a convenient plane. So, then: is Indiana Jones afraid of anything? Yes: snakes (can't blame
him there!) The next time we see Jones, he's a soft-spoken, bespectacled professor in a major midwestern university. He is summoned from his ivy-covered environs to the National Museum of Washington, where a Mr. Brody (Denholm Elliot) asks Indy to secure the Staff of Ra. The Nazis, it seems, need this staff to throw light on the location of the long-lost Ark of the Covenant, which the mystically-minded Hitler hopes to use to make his storm troopers invisible (it's a lot more credible on screen that in print). The Staff of Ra is under the protection of Abner Ravenwood, an old friend of Indy's living in Nepal, runing a gin mill called the Raven. At least, he was living there: now the Raven is in the care of the late Abner's daughter Marion (Karen Allen), who evidentally has had a "history" with Jones. Whatever their personal differences, Indy and Marion are forced to become partners in one action-packed adventure to another, ranging from wandering the snake pits of the Well of Souls to surviving the pyrotechnic unearthing of the sacred Ark. A joint project of Hollywood prodigies George Lucas and Steven Spielberg (the script
was cowritten by Lawrence Kasdan), Raiders of the Lost Ark is not so much a movie as a 115-minute thrill ride. If there is a single adventure-flick clich‚ left unturned by Lucas and Spielberg, we'd like to see it: and remember, a clich‚ is a bad thing only when it doesn't work-and everything works in this one. Despite the eye-popping stunt highlights
and the special effects-crammed finale, the one scene in Raiders that everyone remembers most vividly is Indiana Jones' bored "response" to the scimitar-wielding Sherpa warrior. The abruptness of this grimly hilarious vignette was due to a bad case of dysentery being suffered by Harrison Ford, necessiting the removal of a planned extended fight scene. To those dim viewers who suggest that anyone could have played Indiana Jones: just try to imagine Lucas and Spielberg's original choice, Tom Selleck, in the role (not even Selleck could, after seeing the finished product). Costing $22 million-nearly three times the original estimate--Raiders of the Lost Ark reaped $200 million during its first run. It was followed by the equally well-received Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1985) and Indiana Jones and the Final Crusade (1989), not to mention a shortlived TV-series "prequel".
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