Recently At The Cinemas...Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull

19 years after riding off into the sunset (literally), The Man With the Whip and Fedora is back. Indiana Jones comes encumbered with the twin loadstones of meeting stratospheric expectations while taking great care not to shatter the hazy prisms of nostalgia through which most people still view, associate and cherish this billion dollar franchise with.
After all, taking an iconic character out of mothballs, dusting, cleaning and putting him back on display is a risky proposition. It's a fine balancing act between meeting expectations of what the audience will, naturally, want to re-live from previous installments, while upping the ante with even more inspired writing that takes the character further whilst not compromising on elements that made it resonate in the first place.
The key, then, is to stay true to the spirit of the character/franchise, and you can't go far off the rails.
After all, this is what made the recent resurrections of Rocky Balboa, John Rambo, and John McClane thumping successes in my book. Rocky was always about taking that One Shot life throws at you, Rambo was always heading towards the realisation that he was a machine bred for destruction and there lay his escape from a self imposed exile in Purgatory while McClane had long ago made peace with the fact that he'd always be That Man in the Wrong Place At the Wrong Time, speeding from one escalating action set piece to another.
With Indy, it was about capturing not so much the feel of an era but of an arcane form of celluloid entertainment, in this case, the completely alien (in this part of the world at least) 1930's matinee serials that always concluded with a cliffhanger, thereby guaranteeing returning audiences.
Along with Harrison Ford (effortlessly re-stepping into his iconic role) , Steven Spielberg also trots out the Indiana Jones goody bag of thrills: You have the opening gambit, always the best part of an Indy flick, set in Hangar 51, that mysterious conspiracy shrouded warehouse housing anything from alien bodies to radical technologies. The fact that this warehouse is a dead ringer for the one in which the Ark Of The Covenant was finally wheeled into at the end of Raiders, sets up the giddy nostalgia factor almost instantly. You just know you're going to catch a glimpse of that Famous Face-Melting Pandora's Box and Spielberg does not disappoint.
It's to this warehouse that an older but not necessarily wiser Indy and sidekick Mac (Beowulf's Ray Winstone, here in real life chunky form) are dragged to by the Russian KGB lead by icy cold Irina Spalko (the always phenomenal Cate Blanchett) to retrieve an alien corpse. Indy's subsequent escape, culminating in a nuclear blast is an action tour de force that sets the tone nicely. And from then on, it's back to the tried and truly tested formula that has propelled all 3 previous installments to the giddy heights of entertainment: The hunt for an ancient relic, this time the titular Crystal Skull, that must be found and returned to a long forgotten and buried remnant of an ancient civilization. There's banter, both banal and witty, between Indy and Mutt Williams ( Shia Le Beouf and the filmaker's ode to the Youth market), who accompanies Indy on his quest to both retrieve the skull and a lost Professor Oxley (John Hurt in Mad Hatter mode) who is the key to deciphering the Skull's true purpose, and between Indy and Mutt's mother, a returning Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) from Raiders Of The Lost Ark. No prizes for guessing Indy's connection to Mutt.
There are action set pieces a plenty, culminating in a convoluted chase through the Amazon which functions as the movie's signature Central Piece, like Indy's hijacking of a convoy was to Raiders, the mine cart chase to Temple Of Doom and the tank scene to Last Crusade.
In fact, much care has been taken to replicate elements from the previous flicks. A return of the most engaging of all Indy heroines, Le Bouf's character that functions as a grown up version of Short Round, Mac whose frequent duplicity calls to mind Indy's shiftiest heroine Elsa Schneider from Last Crusade, a spill down waterfalls that's reminiscent of Temple Of Doom, Jim Broadbent's Dean Charles Stanforth who subs nicely enough for the late Denholm Elliott's Marcus Brody while John Hurt's Professor Oxley replaces the older patriarchal figure obsessed with an ancient artifact a la Sean Connery's Henry Jones Sr in Last Crusade. Throw in the various assortment of creepy crawlies, trawls through dank and musty tunnels, a nod to Indy's abhorrence for snakes, a red line streaking through a map denoting Indy's travels from one place to another and a finale that is heavy on other worldy goings on (in this case extra terrestrial rather than Religious Lore) and you'd think Spielberg and Co had tossed in all the relevant ingredients into the stew.
So why then does the resultant broth still taste like something's missing?
Well, try the fact that the entire proceedings here have..well.. a rushed feel to the whole thing. I remember far greater interaction between Indy and Marion in Raiders, far more interplay even between Indy and the annoyingly whiny Willie Scott and resourceful side kick Short Round in Temple Of Doom, while it was The Last Crusade's key strength;Indy's difficult relationship with his father, tempestuous liason with Elsa and familiar camaraderie with Marcus and Sallah.
Crystal Skull seems to be in a rush to get from action set piece to bigger action set piece to Revelatory Climax and Effects Laden Finale.
And since Raiders, every Indy movie has seen a gradual deterioration in it's Chief Villain. We've gone from the reptilian menace of Ronald Lacey's Major Toht , to Amrish Puri's campy but still effective Mola Ram, down to an ineffectual Julian Glover's Walter Donovan and it pretty much reaches it's nadir in Blanchett's Irina Spalko. Blanchett is simply incapable of a bad performance, but by refusing to make Spalko a power mad agent of destruction but rather the ultimate scientist who wants to possess the Ultimate Knowldege, she blunts the edge off the character, robbing it of some much needed menace.
Ironically, by upping the stakes in the thrills department, Indy 4 sacrifices it's core appeal: That amidst it's breathless pace, Indy 1-3 still made time to have you know it's characters as they shouted, screamed,bantered and connected atop rope bridges, mine carts, caves, caverns and deserts.
Crystal Skull updates the Pre-World War 2 anxiety of the previous installments with Post War Paranoia of 1957, replete with Red Menace propaganda, rock and roll, greasy hairs and leather jackets, but the period doesn't sit well with Henry Jones Jr. In fact, given the fact that he's actually referred to by that name more often than his adopted moniker (something he would not have tolerated 19 years ago) , in addition to Gramps and Old Man by Mutt not to mention an ending that suggests..shock! horror!.. the impending Domestication Of Dr.Jones, I am moved to wonder..is this Spielberg and Lucas' sly nod to Indy being gradually put out to pasture to see his Golden Years out in tranquility?
If so, I for one, would have been content to re watch episodes 1 to 3, contentedly basking in the glow of Indy at his prime.
A consistent Trilogy is now an uneven Quadrilogy.
And look no further than Crystal Skull for the mismatch.

Recently At The Cinemas...Iron Man

Plot: Tony Stark is the complete playboy who also happens to be an engineering genius. While in Afghanistan demonstrating a new missile he's captured and wounded. His captors want him to assemble a missile for them but instead he creates an armored suit and a means to prevent his death from the shrapnel left in his chest by the attack. He uses the armored suit to escape. Back in the U.S. he announces his company will cease making weapons and he begins work on an updated armored suit only to find that Obadiah Stane, his second in command at Stark industries has been selling Stark weapons to the insurgents. He uses his new suit to return to Afghanistan to destroy the arms and then to stop Shane from misusing his research.-Courtesy of IMDB

Iron Man opens with Robert Downey Jr. cradling a whisky glass. It works both as a nod to the film's origins (Tony Stark has a drinking problem in the comics) and it's star. Iron Man is not the first superhero flick to feature a billionaire playboy using his prodigious mind not to mention enviable fiscal resources to fight crime and right wrongs, but it can lay proud claim to projecting one we can readily connect to.

This is in no way a reflection on Christian Bale's essaying of a similar character in Batman Begins, but more to do with a star's ability to imprint his real life in varying shades onto a screen alter ego.

Christian Bale can do intense in his sleep, but he's not the one with a once boyishly handsome visage now streaked with character lines.

Robert Downey Jr. nails the part simply on the basis of his having lived the life of Stark to a certain degree and his face mirrors that of a life lived larger than most and often on the precipice of free fall. It's almost as though his arrest for drink and drug related offences practically branded the role onto him, searing him with Stark's demons, cauterizing Downey into Stark.

It's what makes Iron Man such delicious viewing, even more than it's skewering of Right Wing policies on Weapons Manufacture.

Yes, we know that Arms Maker Stark undergoes an epiphany of sorts when he is captured to make his own weapons for the very people his "products" are supposed to keep at bay, and knowledge of his company's dubious "double-dipping" to arm both their Government and the "Enemy" with the same set of "toys" only strenghtens his resolve to make and keep the "coolest" one for himself.

And the analogy of a heartless profiteer whose gadget-packed suit of armour is essentially scrap metal without a glowing "ticker" to keep him operational, is anything but subtle.

That the CGI on display (much of it cool) aid rather than overwhelm the story and the fact that Gwyneth Paltrow, for once, actually comes across as endearing with her subtle tap-dance of repressed feelings around her charismatic employer, is mere icing on the cake.

The cake itself, and a rich,creamy and luscious one it is, is Downey Jr, nailing the part with consummate ease, whether he's flooring you with his rat-tat-tat one-liners or convincingly etching the potrayal of a flawed man starting on the road to redemption.

Whether this applies to the actor or the character is immaterial. You want to cheer both of them on.

This Tin Man has Heart.

Recently At The Cinemas....The Forbidden Kingdom

In Forbidden Kingdom, American teenager Jason (Michael Angarano), who is obsessed with Hong Kong cinema and kungfu classics, finds an antique Chinese staff in a pawn shop: the legendary stick weapon of the Chinese sage and warrior, the Monkey King (Jet Li). With the lost relic in hand, Jason unexpectedly finds himself transported back to ancient China.There, he meets the drunken kungfu master, Lu Yan (Jackie Chan); an enigmatic and skillful Silent Monk (Jet Li); and a vengeance-bent kungfu beauty, Golden Sparrow (Crystal Liu Yi Fei), who lead him on his quest to return the staff to its rightful owner, the Monkey King - imprisoned in stone by the evil Jade Warlord (Collin Chou) for five hundred years. Along the way, while attempting to outmaneuver scores of Jade Warriors, Cult Killers and the deadly White Hair Demoness, Ni Chang (Li Bing Bing), Jason learns about honor, loyalty and friendship, and the true meaning of kungfu, and thus frees himself. ---Synopsis courtesy of IMDB

The Forbidden Kingdom, the much awaited, hyped and trumpeted team up between 2 Asian Screen Icons of Martial Arts Mayhem, Jackie Chan and Jet Li, works exactly where War, another awaited (perhaps not as eagerly) team up between Jason "Transporter" Statham and Jet Li did not. And it works for one simple reason: It delivers exactly what you expect from such a team up: Wall to Wall chop socky, once again via the exquisite choreography of ace fight coordinator Yuen Wo Ping. And that is all one really needs from a flick like this. Fights, fights and more fights.

Balls to the wall scrapes, fisticuffs, wire fu and white knuckle stunts, smoothed over by acrobatic agility. Give me that and you've sold me.

The story? Ah...that's where you'd best pay no mind. It's one part Karate Kid (geeky white kid bullied and beaten up, who then gets a crash course in Kung Fu, courtesy of not one but 2 Mr.Miyagis) and one part Shaolin Kung Fu Flick( if you can picture such flicks where characters not only talk English, but spew American Slang like "Taking a Dump" ) , with liberal poaching of elements from Chinese Kung Fu epics of yore, like the Bride With White Hair, evil warlords and Celestial Gods on top of Chan and Li's Drunken Master and Stoic Monk characters while fights staged in tea houses and bamboo forests are obviously more recent cribbings from newer incarnations like Ang Lee's Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Zhang Yimou's wu xia flicks like Hero, House Of Flying Daggers and Curse Of The Golden Flower.

Such blatant unoriginality can be easily forgiven, especially when Kingdom even delivers that other thing you expect in a Jet/Jackie team up: One scene where the martial maestros go at it. The Jet-Jackie fight, unlike the Jason/Jet one in War, is not over in the blink of an eye and goes on just long enough to be savoured, a comment that can be eaily applied to the whole movie.

And in this age of bloated blockbusters..it is a blessing indeed.