Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I'll take a Wookiee over Shia LaBeouf any day

Grade: B +

Director: J. J. Abrams

Starring: Harrison Ford, Carrie Fisher, Mark Hamill, Daisy Ridley, John Boyega, Adam Driver, Oscar Isaac, Lupita Nyong'o, Andy Serkis, Peter Mayhew and Max von Sydow

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 16 min.

“You changed your hair,” Han Solo (Harrison Ford) tells Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) the first time they see each other in Star Wars: The Force Awakens. “Same jacket,” Leia replies, eyeing his garb.

It’s a moment that wouldn’t feel out of place in Richard Linklater's Before Trilogy, the sort of warm yet uneasy exchange between an estranged couple still harboring mutual affection. But their references hold particular import in the Star Wars ethos, for those who recall Leia’s iconic hair buns and Solo’s trademark black jacket. These dual concepts of legacy drive The Force Awakens, both set and released about 30 years after The Return of the Jedi. It’s a film focused on fate and family. Like Creed, it’s also aware of its wider cultural significance and leverages the same.

Under the direction of  J. J. Abrams, this Star Wars is still an epic space adventure but with a slightly harder edge. The film opens with a My Lai-type massacre, executed by Stormtroopers who actually shoot straight and bleed. The carnage shakes the resolve of one, nicknamed Finn (John Boyega), who becomes a conscientious objector and aids the escape of ace starfighter Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) and eventually Poe’s BB-8 droid carrying Vital Information™. Finn’s odyssey soon crosses paths with Rey (Daisy Ridley), a young raider on the planet Jakku who scrapes by scavenging parts off derelict starships half-buried in the desert’s sands.

The Force Awakens lifts the narrative elements of A New Hope, adds a dash of The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, then puts them in a blender for a sequel that’s not an upheaval, but rather one that splendidly repackages the Star Wars saga. The erstwhile Civil War between the Rebel Alliance and Galactic Empire has morphed into a clash between the Resistance, dedicated to the Republic, and the First Order, which adopted the mantle of the Empire. The First Order’s “emperor” is Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis in motion-capture), while its dual commanders are General Hux (Domhnall Gleeson), the Tarkin of this story, and Kylo Ren (Adam Driver), a cruel, masked discipline of Darth Vader skilled in the Force's dark arts.

There’s a cantina scene; Jakku is basically Tatooine; icy detours recount Hoth. There’s a bigger, badder Death Star, yet with only a fraction of the buildup of the previous ones. “How do we blow it up? There’s always a way,” Solo almost quips as the Resistance plans their attack on this latest planetary war machine. And there's a search for a self-exiled Jedi, this time Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), a mission announced during the film’s opening crawl and the closest thing to an Abrams-esque MacGuffin in this tale.

From another viewpoint, The Force Awakens is how A New Hope would have felt had it been made and released after the comparatively antiseptic Episodes I-III. The film's true force is found in the ties between characters and their destinies, the perpetual struggle between good and evil and the film’s unavoidable intersection of nostalgia and discovery. A chase through a canyon of derelict Star Destroyers is a plaintive backdrop for thrilling action sequences that marry new age technology with old school visual effects like models, expansive sets and matte paintings. It’s great to see Harrison Ford finally having fun again, and Fisher now looks and sounds like her mom, Debbie Reynolds. Yet Ridley is effervescent, holding her own physically and when Rey must match witticisms with Solo (no easy task). Both she and Boyega are new protagonists for a new generation of fans.

It’s also a milieu where Luke Skywalker is regarded as a “myth” and Han Solo the stuff of bygone legends. The Force Awakens isn't a great movie—the storyline is openly derivative and grows repetitive over the final third, with the trademark cross-cutting battle scenes coming at the expense of the fertile character development. But it's a great Star Wars movie, building on its mythology in the best tradition of epic storytelling. When Solo declares, “Chewie, we’re home,” as the smuggling duo finally returns to Millennium Falcon for the first time in decades, it feels like he’s speaking for all of us.

The Expendables 3

Just call me Mickey Jr. and let's make

another sequel, Rocky

Grade: C

Director: Patrick Hughes

Starring: Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Wesley Snipes, Dolph Lundgren, Randy Couture, Antonio Banderas, Terry Crews, Harrison Ford, Mel Gibson, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Kelsey Grammer, Kellan Lutz, Ronda Rousey, Victor Ortiz and Glen Powell

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 6 min.

In 1993, Arnold Schwarzenegger starred in Last Action Hero, a satire of the action film genre. While not a well-made film, its premise was prescient. The days of big Hollywood action star are over. The lineage dates back to a swashbuckling Douglas Fairbanks and runs through such paragons as John Wayne, Steve McQueen, Clint Eastwood, Sylvester Stallone and Schwarzenegger.

Today, the action genre survives and continues to thrive. But our craving for the larger-than-life hero has fallen prey to decades without major wars—movie heroes were partly born from our desire to animate their real-life archetypes—and advances in computer-generated imagery that have democratized action casting. Nowadays, any actor can be the hero, including Tom Cruise, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Tobey Maguire and even Scarlett Johansson. Big-budget action movies once served their lead actor; today it’s the other way around.

The dual function of The Expendables series is inherent in its title. The characters are over-the-hill paramilitary mercenaries out to show they still have what it takes to save the day. The actors playing these roles are a cadre of over-the-hill action stars out to prove they can still entertain audiences (and earn a paycheck).

But it’s a function that was served four years with the first Expendables film. Two sequels later comes The Expendables 3, which feels as long in the tooth as its geriatric cast.

The plot, such as it is, has Stallone leading a band of younger Expendables to apprehend a brutal international arms dealer played by Mel Gibson. But when the whippersnappers are captured, it falls to Stallone and his old crew to, well, save the day.

Listing character names is pointless, as there’s little separating the actors from their token roles. Indeed, the meta flybys are what sustain the film, which opens with Sly and company breaking former comrade Wesley Snipes out of a foreign military prison—he was jailed for “tax evasion,” Snipes’ character quips. Libation-loving Dolph Lundgren takes several swigs from a flask. Kelsey Grammer references his multiple divorces and children. A garrulous Antonio Banderas is a Spanish war vet who lies about his age to get a job. Harrison Ford gets to pilot in a dogfight again. Schwarzenegger tells everybody to “Get too da chaw-pa!” And Gibson chews the scenery as a villain once cast aside by the establishment (wink wink) with more gusto and acting acumen than the rest of this film deserves. There’s even a shot taken at Bruce Willis, who declined to reprise his role from the previous two films over a salary disagreement—his character is called “an asshole” and “no longer in the picture.”

Unfortunately, the rest of The Expendables 3 is formulaic filler. The younger Expendables—which include boxer Victor Ortiz, MMA star Ronda Rousey and Kellan Lutz (Emmett Cullen)—are a charmless, witless bore, although I wonder if that was somewhat intentional given the film’s premise. And at some the film starts taking the cast’s cheeky comeback too seriously, inserting extended action sequences that are little more than a collage of cannon fodder and bad CGI.

It would have been wiser for the film to fully embrace its satirical side, a la Tropic Thunder or even Last Action Hero. Otherwise, for everyone without a frame of cinematic reference that predates 1990, the film feels much like its title suggests: expendable.

Ender's Game

From now on, you're Chewbacca.

Do you think I'm cute, Private Chewie?

Grade: C +

Director: Gavin Hood

Starring: Asa Butterfield, Harrison Ford, Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin, Ben Kingsley and Viola Davis

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 54 min.

Director Gavin Hood’s adaptation of Ender’s Game, controversial North Carolina-based author Orson Scott Card’s decorated 1985 sci-fi novel, smacks of Starship Troopers sans the social and political satire or kitschy charm, crossed with Harry Potter (yes, I understand Card published his novel 12 years before J.K. Rowling’s first book; the comparison remains illustrative).

Fifty years after mankind was nearly annihilated by an alien insect race called the Formics, brilliant preteen Ender Wiggin (Asa Butterfield) is plucked from his family life by military commander Colonel Graff (Harrison Ford) to join the International Fleet and attend Battle School. Anointed by Graff as “the One,” Ender and his fellow cadets train to essentially become virtual-reality gamer soldiers tapped to wage interstellar war against the Formics.

Hood’s visuals are impressive enough, and the cast—which also includes Hailee Steinfeld, Abigail Breslin, Viola Davis and Ben Kingsley—is solid and invested in the material. However, Hood’s screenplay eschews much in the way of intellectual shadings until a provocative penultimate act that introduces some compelling moral and psychological conundrums. Unfortunately, they are quickly cast aside for a finale that scales down the novel’s climax for a tacked-on, cloying coda.

42

I'll play for you, Mr. Rickey, but you

have to stop calling me 'Short Round'

Grade: C +

Director: Brian Helgeland

Starring: Chadwick Boseman, Harrison Ford, Nicole Beharie, Andre Holland, Christopher Meloni and Lucas Black

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 2 hr. 8 min.

42, the new biopic about Jackie Robinson, draws its title from the iconic jersey number worn by the trailblazing baseballer. It’s also the approximate number of times Robinson (Chadwick Boseman) gets called “coon,” “porch monkey,” “ni**er,” or some other derogatory term during the film. And the number of times Robinson and his stalwart wife Rachel (Nicole Beharie) make plaintive yet resolute eye contact during some trying on-field incident. And it’s seemingly the number of times Robinson repeatedly asks Brooklyn Dodgers’ General Manager Branch Rickey (Harrison Ford), “Why did you do this, Mr. Rickey?”

The first couple of times Rickey answers this question are the rare moments of nuance in the otherwise informative yet formulaic 42. Rickey claims to not see white or black, but rather the green money just waiting to be harvested from African-American consumers. It might not be the most idealistic notion, but it’s a fair and realistic one. Indeed, social progress has long been a bedfellow with economic influence, whether it’s lunch counter sit-ins or LGBT boycotts.

But the farther writer-director Brian Helgeland’s hagiographic home run travels, the less it focuses on any shades of gray. Ultimately, Rickey relays the injustice suffered by a black college player he once managed in the early 1900s. It’s a tale Rickey shared regularly in real life, but one that hardly explains his motivation for helping break Major League Baseball’s color barrier four decades later.

As a primer on Jackie Robinson, there’s a lot to admire about 42, which spans Rickey signing Robinson to a minor league contract in August 1945 through the end of Robinson’s MLB rookie season in 1947. The majority of events in the film are drawn faithfully from historical accounts, including the infamous 1947 suspension of Dodgers’ manager Leo Durocher (Christopher Meloni) by Commissioner Happy Chandler, the petition circulated by disgruntled Dodger players to protest playing with Robinson, and even the infamous spiking of Robinson by Enos Slaughter.

[One striking lapse is contrasting Pasadena, Calif., Robinson’s boyhood home, as enlightened in comparison to the segregated South, when in fact Robinson later wrote about the Jim Crow restrictions he suffered while growing up in California.]

Helgeland also flashes a knack for sports filming, both in-game action and his meticulous digital recreations of the hallowed baseball cathedrals of yore, including Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds and Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The main cast is capable, including Ford (his roles finally catching up with his crotchetiness), Meloni and Andre Holland as famed African-American sportswriter Wendell Smith. I also enjoyed John C. McGinley’s faithful rendering of both the cadence and  colloquialisms of radio play-by-play announcer Red Barber—”This game is tighter than a new pair of shoes on a rainy day.”

On the other hand, Boseman stays firmly between the lines with his performance, much like the film itself. Every episode comes affixed with a halo—racist vitriol in Cincinnati is filtered through the perspective of a little white boy torn between his dad shouting “Ni**er!” and his hero Pee Wee Reese (Lucas Black) putting his arm around Robinson on the diamond. And you’d be forgiven for thinking Robinson batted around .800 for his career, as the only circumstances that keep Robinson from ever getting a base hit are crooked umpires and the vile haranguing of Phillies manager Ben Chapman (Ben Tudyk).

While 42 is easily digestible, it’s hard to not wonder—even during the movie—what accomplished moviemakers like Martin Scorsese, Spike Lee and even Curtis Hanson could have done with this legendary subject. This epic story deserves such epic cinematic treatment.

Cowboys & Aliens

Blondie...James Blondie

Director: Jon Favreau

Starring: Daniel Craig, Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde, Sam Rockwell, Keith Carradine, and Paul Dano

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hr. 58 min.

The titular juxtaposition of Cowboys & Aliens portends an unfortunate stylistic clash first born at the crowded writers table. As the last of a revolving door of contributors throughout the film’s gestation, “Lost” creator Damon Lindelof’s penchant for character development over narrative symmetry proves a toxic mix with Transformers/Star Trek scribes Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman’s outlook that characters are mere window dressing for visual razzle-dazzle.

The dissatisfying result is a rather passé alien invasion flick populated by Old West archetypes that you end up knowing/caring less about the longer you’re around them. Director Jon Favreau (Iron Man and Iron Man 2, spanning the spectrum) uses the opening half-hour to establish an engaging Western tableau. Amnesic Man With No Memory (Daniel Craig) awakens in the 1873 Arizona desert with a stab wound in his side and a laser gun mysteriously strapped to his wrist. He wanders into a town named Absolution, where the real power broker is gruff cattle baron and ex-Army colonel Woodrow Dolarhyde (gruff Harrison Ford).

Their mounting conflict, along with any plot intrigue, evaporates as soon as the alien abductions begin. From there, Cowboys & Aliens is a meandering rescue mission punctuated by the back-story of a doe-eyed mystery woman (Olivia Wilde) and action sequences that pause frequently mid-battle for cloying moments of redemption – e.g., Dolarhyde eventually grows to regard Injuns, including his noble ward (Adam Beach), as real people, too.

As the film lumbers along, it becomes alarmingly apparent that the story the audience is writing in its collective head is far more interesting and original than the one that ends up onscreen. Favreau gets trapped between embracing the story’s dark elements and preserving a popcorn-munching crowd-pleaser. He accomplishes neither, demonstrating he knows the paces of each genre but can’t find their rhyme. Even by the time it rides off into the sunset, Cowboys & Aliens still remains a title in search of a movie.

Neil Morris

Morning Glory

Little lady, you're young enough to be my next wife

Grade: B –

Director: Roger Michell

Starring: Rachel McAdams, Harrison Ford, Diane Keaton, Patrick Wilson, Jeff Goldblum, and John Pankow

MPAA Rating: PG-13

Running Time: 1 hour, 42 minutes

The only convention Morning Glory defies is its early awards season release date. Anyone expecting an update of Broadcast News for the YouTube generation will have to settle for simulacrum that fun but “fluffy,” to borrow the script’s running word-gag. Indeed, South African director John Michell (Notting Hill, Venus) produces something that is a lot like the waning morning talk show at the story’s center: a contrivance occupying a once-vaunted medium that eschews the hard task of generating critical respect in order to take the path to quick and easy entertainment.

Rachel McAdams – who played a plucky news blogger in State of Play – plays Becky, a plucky television producer so devoted to her work (and sleep pattern) that she goes on afternoon dates and, even after being laid off from her job with an early morning show in New Jersey, still sets her alarm clock for 1:30 a.m. in order to watch the multiple TV monitors she sets-up in her bedroom.

Soon enough, Becky finds work with faux-TV network IBS, where the head of programming (Jeff Goldblum) taps her with the challenge of reviving Daybreak, its atrophied and perpetually cellar-dwelling morning program. Impeding this mini-Mary Tyler Moore making it after all is competition from GMA and the Today Show, a miniscule budget, a seemingly inept crew, and diva co-hosts Colleen Puck (Diane Keaton), an aging ex-beauty queen, and foot-fetishing Paul McVee (Ty Burrell).

After firing Paul during her first day on the job, Becky cajoles and semi-blackmails the services of Mike Pomeroy (Harrison Ford), a Pulitzer/Emmy-winning veteran newsman under contract with IBS but languishing in semi-retirement after being pushed out of his evening news anchor’s chair. Described as the “third-worst person in the world” behind Kim Jong-il and Angela Lansbury – “She knows what she did,” says Adam (Patrick Wilson), Becky’s fellow producer and budding romance – Pomeroy is a relic who still yearns to do serious news but is trapped in a TV universe where ratings define relevance.

The denizens of Morning Glory are a collection of inglorious caricatures, sometimes made intolerable by the actors typecast to play them. The talented McAdams shines, even if she plays Becky as an indefatigable flibbertigibbet with bangs who would be better suited to a 1930s screwball comedy. Keaton continues her post-50 histrionic dingbat period – seeing her gyrate on set with the rapper 50 Cent as he performs the five-year-old “Candy Shop” is outdated on multiple levels. And, anyone lucky enough to miss “Extraordinary Measures” can still see what happens when the already grumpy old Ford plays a character written to be cantankerous – hint: there’s lots of growling and furrowed brows.

But, disliking the characters or on-air talent does not necessarily doom a show – how else to explain American Idol? Morning Glory possesses an innocuous charm that becomes infectious once you set aside any preconceived hope that the film will offer clever cultural commentary, media satire, or even a well-written romantic subplot. This is mainstream moviemaking at its most digestible – pass the frittatas.

Neil Morris

Extraordinary Measures

And over here, I've outlined how we manage to sustain our careers.
It's a complex formula.

Grade: C

Director: Tom Vaughen

Starring: Brendan Fraser, Harrison Ford, and Keri Russell

MPAA Rating: PG

Running Time: 1 hour, 46 minutes

To paraphrase Simon & Garfunkel, “Where have you gone, Han Solo?”

Appearing as a literal reflection of his bygone glory, it is telling that Harrison Ford’s most memorable recent film performance was the brief glimpse of his Star Wars star-maker in (500) Days of Summer. In recent years, Ford’s onscreen offerings have been a series of forgettable, phoned-in variations on the same crotchety curmudgeon persona.

In Extraordinary Measures, Ford accomplishes the near-impossible. He not only convinces us look back fondly on the halcyon days of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, but he also makes us yearn for the blessed sanctuary of scenes in which costar Brendan Fraser appears without him.

Based on true events, the story behind Extraordinary Measures is undoubtedly inspiring. Fraser plays John Crowley, a biotechnology executive whose two youngest children are afflicted with Pompe disease, a degenerative neuromuscular disorder with no known cure. Facing the impending death of his children, Crowley reaches out to Dr. Robert Stonehill (Ford), a research scientist living in flyover country and one of the leading theorists on Pompe disease. Crowley and Stonehill team up to supply the respective bucks and brains behind a biotech startup dedicated to discovering and expediting a treatment for Pompe’s.

Director Tom Vaughan merits credit for a respectful depiction of the interplay amongst the Crowley family. In contrast to other films that often wallow in every manipulative, heart-wrenching symptom and setback, time is spent showing the Crowleys as steadfast parents trying to help their children lead the most normal lives possible. Likewise, even when wheelchair-bound or bedridden, Pompe sufferers Megan and Patrick are cast as precocious and mischievous – in other words, they act like regular kids.

Where the film begins to falter is when the family drama segues into a medical drama revolving around Crowley and Co.’s foray through the financial/bureaucratic labyrinth of medical research and development. This is heady, informative stuff in the right cinematic hands. Here, however, it’s presented more like a film adaptation of “Biotech Startups for Dummies” shoehorned into a Hallmark Hall of Fame movie.

From one scene to another, John Crowley is either a devoted, undaunted dad or a resourceful businessman. But, the film does not attempt to effectively bridge the gap between these two sides of the same character until the film’s final act, when Crowley and Stonehill cut some bioethical corners to ensure Megan and Patrick take part in clinical trials of a possible treatment. Until then, it is a rather discomforting to watch Crowley celebrate earning millions off his biotech startup while his children continue to deteriorate.

But, the real problem is deciphering what purpose Stonehill serves in this story. Seeing how the screenplay is based a book by Geeta Anand named “The Cure,” it is no shocker where this story is heading. And, the real-life Stonehill, Dr. William Canfield, was probably instrumental in any medical breakthrough. Within the context of this film, however, what’s surprising is that Stonehill is not ultimately responsible for the enzyme developed to treat Pompe’s. He’s just an irascible, eccentric egghead who doesn’t return telephone calls left by the parents of sick children pleading for Stonehill’s help in his chosen area of expertise. He yells at and alienates his family, friends, and coworkers. And, he holds his specialized knowledge for ransom hoping some desperate dad will bankroll his exit out of a low-paying college research job.

Right after Crowley throws caution to the wind by leaving a lucrative corporate career to relocate his family to Nebraska and start his business with Stonehill, he visits the doctor to discuss strategy in advance of an upcoming meeting with potential venture capitalists. Instead, Stonehill just heaves a file folder full of crumpled papers at him and leaves to go bass fishing. The scene is intended to make Stonehill look folksy; instead, he just comes off like a jerk.

Extraordinary Measures is the first movie released by the production subsidiary CBS Films. With its formulaic plotting, plodding pacing, and even the actual use of Eric Clapton’s “Change The World,” it looks more like something usually broadcasted on the company’s TV network arm. Instead of medical miracles, the film’s title more aptly describes what’s necessary at this point to resuscitate Harrison Ford’s ailing career.

Neil Morris

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

When you said the plot was stuck in the mud,
I thought you were speaking metaphorically.

Grade: B –
Director: Steven Spielberg
Starring: Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Ray Winstone, and Karen Allen
MPAA Rating: PG-13
Running Time: 2 hours, 4 minutes

Lest anyone think that a return to Indiana Jones would erase Harrison Ford’s curmudgeonly scowl and replace it with a rakish grin, think again. The instances in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull when the 65-year-old Ford flashes his bygone, Solo-esque whimsy are more than forced; they’re practically vaudevillian. And, so it goes with the fourth installment in the august serial, which comes off far too frequently over its 2 hour-plus running time as a nostalgic revue rather than embodying the sense of discovery that elevated the original trilogy.

Crystal Skull is not a bad movie; in fact, it is a rather enjoyable one when judged in a vacuum. However, nothing that blends the talents of Ford, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and a supporting cast headlined by Cate Blanchett with the Indy Jones mystique can ever be viewed through a purely objective prism. Hamstrung by Lucas’ meddling – from an over-reliance on CGI-saturation (last seen eroding the Star Wars prequels) to such hokey gimcracks as multiple animal reaction shots – and another dog-eared Spielberg foray into father-son relationships and extraterrestrials, the whole spectacle emits an air of homage to the Indiana Jones series and beyond.

It begins with a romp through the Area 51 warehouse of antiquities last seen in the closing shot of Raiders of the Lost Ark (Spielberg flashes a glimpse of the Ark for good, gratuitous measure). This comes on the tail-end of an opening sequence that, with its (thankfully) non-CGI visual dexterity and American Graffiti tableau, reminds us once again of Spielberg’s firmly entrenched status as the John Ford of our era, a master at effective, seemingly seamless filmmaking who can impart more through acute camera choreography than any other director. However, the scene is also a microcosm of the film that follows: a handsomely shot tease highlighted by a car chase that goes nowhere, literally and figuratively.

Later, when Jones gazes reflectively upon a photo of Sean Connery as his now-dearly departed father, a parallel to Connery’s latter-day James Bond entries comes into focus. Indeed, Crystal Skull is Ford’s Never Say Never Again, a return to his seminal movie role after over a decade absence (in Ford’s case, nearly two decades). Along with that frown, Ford’s gait is a bit more slouched and his clothes are not as tight-fitting as they once where. Nonetheless, Indy still strikes a dashing pose when he dons his trademark fedora, even if it is only when he is cast as a shadow or a silhouette against the backdrop of the setting sun or nuclear mushroom cloud.

Set in 1957, Jones has traded Nazi pursuers for Communists ones, headed by Blanchett’s Irina Spalko, a Russian femme fatale who resembles Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction and sports a Slavic lilt straight out of Natasha from Rocky and Bullwinkle. After losing possession of a container housing the remains of the Rosewell alien and being nearly vaporized in a nuclear test blast, Jones inexplicably loses his Yale professorship due to governmental pressure, a device Spielberg introduces only as a means to interject Eisenhower-era Red Scare as a further means to trot out some strained, fleeting allusion to contemporary political witch-hunting. More perplexing, this subplot is mysteriously forgotten once the adventure begins and miraculously vanishes once it finally ends.

To make a long story short (without spoilers), it turns out the alien’s skull emits an energy force that might unlock the key to the human psyche, or something along those lines. Despite the fact that the Soviets now possess one of the magical craniums, they follow Jones on his quest to find more in the mythical Mayan city of El Dorado. Jones is accompanied by Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf), a ‘50s greaser who, despite his Wild One-esque entrance, exudes less Brando than Travolta in Grease. Along the way, Mutt somehow morphs from a punk kid whose weapons of choice are a switchblade and comb into a swashbuckling daredevil. I did not mind when inexplicable inspiration prompts Mutt to suddenly tree-swing like Tarzan through an Amazon rainforest with the skill and bearings necessary to catch a car chase. But, it was a bit much when he suddenly develops the ability to fence while straddling two speeding vehicles.

The milieus feel claustrophobic and phony against the backdrop of sets mostly erected on soundstages and green screens. Add to that computer-enhanced action sequences that allow Jones and Co. to take death-defying to a level not seen since the days of Wile E. Coyote. Into this gumbo toss in John Hurt playing the same crazed old man role he always plays nowadays, Karen Allen reprising her Raiders role of (the kidnapped) Marion Ravenwood to inform Jones he has a son, and Spielberg winding things up by returning to his Close Encounters of the Third Kind comfort zone.

Cap it off with, of all things, a wedding scene, and you have a summer movie that, by most standards, is an above-average actioner. But, that is the problem: without anything to set this film apart, you find yourself in the position of grading an Indiana Jones film against the likes of National Treasure and Mission: Impossible. When it comes to Indiana Jones, the measuring stick is – and should be – a lot longer.

Neil Morris