INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL

Written by David Koepp
Directed by Steven Spielberg
Starring Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Karen Allen and Cate Blanchett


Mutt Williams: For an old man, you’re not bad in a fight. What are you? 80?

The latest Indiana Jones installment opens with an impromptu drag race in the middle of the Nevada desert. (It actually opens with a silly, fake gopher making a face at the camera but that is far too bizarre for me to comment on.) A car full of teenagers, looking 50’s fresh, pass a number of army trucks full of troops. When they get to the front of the line, they encourage the army driver across from them to step on the gas and they’re off. In many ways, this opening sequence announces the tone for what’s to come in Steven Spielberg’s INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL. The image is crisp; the camera movement is slick; and the thrills are swept up into momentary exhilaration. But then, as the cavalcade turns off the road and the teenagers continue on into the desert, it becomes clear that the entire sequence was speeding toward nothing at all.


It is 1957 and nearly twenty years since Indy’s last adventure, mirroring the same amount of time between the last film and this one. Both Indy and the man who first incarnated him in 1981, Harrison Ford, are in their 60’s now. Still, as Indy hops from towering to teetering crate in an army hanger and swings into a truck with his trusty whip secured against the rafters, it’s clear that his face may be weathered but this old guy’s still pretty spry. Indy has managed to get himself caught by the KGB, led by Cate Blanchett in a razor sharp, black bob as Irina Spalko. She needs his expertise to find a body that she hopes will then lead her to a crystal skull. Legend has it, as it tends to in Indiana movies, that the one who returns the crystal skull to its proper resting place will have infinite knowledge bestowed upon them. This would give this person the ability to know the thoughts of every person on earth and the ability to manipulate these thoughts. I can barely control my own thoughts so I doubt I could handle that kind of responsibility but the Russians seem pretty convinced that they would do just fine.


Indy also has a new adventuring partner, 21-year-old Mutt Williams (Shia LaBeouf). Casting Shia as the rebel without a cause (I may have swooned every time he unnecessarily ran his comb through his perfect pompadour) may have been an easy decision to ensure a younger crowd or to take some o the stunt pressure off Ford but either way, it works. As usual, Shia brings an unimposing depth to popcorn fare and, in this case, some great chemistry between him and Ford. Bringing in fresh blood or modernizing in general can be tricky when you’re also trying to honour tradition. The dynamic between Indy & Mutt (as well as the return of Karen Allen as Indy’s first squeeze, Marion Ravenwood) allows for the cheesy one-liners to flourish but the loss of Douglas Slocombe as cinematographer (he died in 2004) has practically removed the classical Hollywood style that made some of the more ridiculously implausible Indy moments bearable, if not campily enjoyable. Spielberg’s regular cinematographer, Janusz Kaminski, is certainly a genius but the only classical element remaining is a soft focus to keep Indy looking as young as possible. The result is at times breathtaking but fundamentally less authentic.


There is no question that Indiana Jones is a cinematic icon, from his hat and whip to John Williams’s triumphant score. The danger with reviving the character after such a long period is that you run the risk of tarnishing one of Hollywood’s most celebrated action heroes. If you’re going to take that risk, there had better be a good reason. The premise and ultimate conclusion of INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL leave you with some brilliant imagery, wavering levels of excitement and a nagging question as to whether this was the best they could come up with after twenty years. Indy does entertain with relatively little disappointment but while his latest adventure doesn’t kill the franchise, it does nothing for it either. Anyway, Spielberg best not wait another twenty years before the next installment. If he does, Indy will be a lot more likely to be cracking hips than whips.

MUNICH

Written by Tony Kushner & Eric Roth
Directed by Steven Spielberg

Writer's Note: This first paragraph talks about the final scene of the film. I do not discuss anything that will ruin the ending for you but you have been warned.

It is a gray day. Avner (Eric Bana) meets with his former employer from the Israeli government in a park in Brooklyn, New York. He has nearly lost his mind to paranoia, always wondering when someone will end the hunt and finally find him. During his unofficial employment with the Mossad, Avner headed a team of five men whose mission was to track down the members of Palestinian terrorist group, Black September. This group was behind the tragedy at the 1972 Olympic games in Munich, Germany, where 11 Israeli athletes were murdered after being held hostage. It has become abundantly clear that he can and likely will suffer the same fate as the men on his hit list and he needs reassurance that he can at the very least trust the people of his homeland, the people that trusted this mission to him in the first place. His former liaison, Ephraim (Geoffrey Rush), dismisses his concerns, allowing Avner a moment to breathe. Ephraim then declines Avner’s invitation to break bread and two large buildings in the background of the frame catch your eye while Avner stands still and puzzled. These two buildings are the twin towers destroyed on September 11, 2001 in what has been described as one of the most devastating terrorist attacks ever to take place on American soil. This moment, I apologize, comes at the very end of the film and stretches the issue of justification past the Palestinian/Israeli conflict, finding Spielberg asking his audience if there is ever any true resolution to any ongoing violent conflict between nations or between peoples.

Spielberg’s film interpretation is not specifically about the Munich killings but more so about what came afterwards, while always paying mind to what came before and led up to the event. In telling this story, he is walking a fine line trying not to offend while remaining authentic. I don’t doubt Spielberg’s genuine interest in remaining objective here. In fact, it was imperative he do so to successfully force his audience to question the usage of violence as a means to resolve conflict. Had he shown the Jewish retaliators as nothing more than a beaten people unquestionably right in their quest for revenge, than he would have created nothing more than a sympathy inducing manipulation. Of course there is something of a sympathetic element for these assassins who see themselves as soldiers but that’s inevitable as their people were undeniably wronged in Munich at the hands of murderers. Only these five men are not your typical soldiers. They’re toy-makers, antiques dealers, expecting fathers. They are regular men with one common dedication among them, Israel. Their convictions can only take them so far as when it comes time to actually pull the trigger or detonate the bomb, the awareness that they are about to take someone’s life becomes a painful curse they hadn’t realized their beliefs might not be able to carry them through. The lack of experience as well as the naïve approach become visible as Avner corners the first name on the list. He fumbles as he pulls his gun from his pants and almost lowers it while the condemned begs for his life. Is this really going to help change the future for the better? No. However, the alternative is to take the Munich injustice sitting down.

MUNICH is not just a moral conflict story about the nature of right and wrong despite watching heroes become detached from the brutality of their lives. It is also an energetic thriller. Spielberg has delivered so many solid, enjoyable popcorn movies in the past and here he brings his knowledge and applies it to the tragic underbelly of humanity. The unofficial Mossad kill team are natural underdogs because of their small, humble lives and not because they’re Jewish. They travel from one European city to the next, gathering information on the locations of the names on their list and carrying out their duty to kill these men. Spielberg brings so much humanity to these hunts. Innocent bystanders’ lives are often threatened or ended and even the men they are meant to kill have families and fragility. The heroes also make small, potentially disastrous errors on their missions. This all leads to the paranoia and confusion over whether they’re making these mistakes or are outsiders setting them up to make them. In some, the paranoia leads to guilt while in others, the guilt leads to insanity. And as if the viewer weren’t in enough despair already, Spielberg doesn’t show the Munich massacre at the beginning of the film to charge the audience behind the Israelis. Instead he reveals the developing details at different intervals throughout the film to remind the viewer how this particular mission began. And as we are wrapped up in the intrigue and morality of this mission, these violent flashbacks serve also as reminders to the team of a reality they had long left behind out of necessity.

Of course the Israel/Palestine conflict did not begin with the Munich Olympics killings. And Spielberg does not tell the story of the mindset behind the men who carried out that mission. If he did though, I would imagine there would be just as much torment in the minds of those killers as the killers who are this film’s heroes. MUNICH does not pass judgment on nations but on mankind, asking us to find the better way. As the Israel/Palestine conflict is not over, nor the numerous other needlessly violent world conflicts, and though MUNICH takes a rather violent approach to advocate peace, it still makes a powerful and intelligent argument for immediate change.