Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade
Disclaimer:
The film I’m reviewing this week is rated: PG-13
There will be some gruesome images included in this review.
While my opinions on the last film were mixed at best, it did still make a lot of money at the time of its release which prompted Spielberg, Lucas, and the Indy crew to churn out one more movie that was originally supposed to bring the Indy films to a close. Pulling out all the stops and giving us a follow-up in keeping with the tone of the original film, The Last Crusade is a much more widely praised sequel as opposed to its predecessor and considering how long it’s been since the first time I’ve seen it, I really had a fun time watching it again. To be straight up, I honestly didn’t remember much from the movie before rewatching it for the sake of this review, but once I rewatched it I was surprised how I had such a hard time remembering these moments.
Much like Raiders, this movie deals in not a whole lot of logical moments, but at least fun ones that Indiana Jones has become known for and they are very memorable. I think the main reason I had a hard time remembering them before was also because I watch movies much differently now then I did when I first saw this movie. Mostly because I have this whole review blog that you’re reading right now. There are legit interesting characters that play their parts well, creative camera work and stunt choreography, and it all amounts to an adventure that fits perfectly into the Indiana Jones canon. Despite how much crap I gave it in the last review, I think Temple of Doom did earn its place among the rest of the Indiana Jones films, though The Last Crusade definitely fits much more comfortably in the Indiana Jones lineup then Temple of Doom. Although, even with the familiar tone, humor, and pizzazz of Raiders, does The Last Crusade still hold up after all these years? Well, there’s only one way to find out.
Find your dad, give him a big hug, and prepare for this holy grand adventure with Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade!
As I said in the intro, this movie is much more in the mold of the first film, Raiders of the Lost Ark, then the second film, Temple of Doom. It begins, similar to Raiders, with an intro having no real bearing on the story where we see Indiana (played in this flashback by River Phoenix) in his first ever adventure as a child: trying to recover the Cross of Coronado from what he believes to be looters in the year 1912. It has energy, intrigue, and action even if we don’t have to worry about him potentially dying. We see a lot of things that explain the character that he’s become from the fact he used to be a boy scout where he presumably learned about self-defense, survival, and other techniques we see him utilize throughout the films while also explaining his sense of justice and morality. Towards the end of the intro we’re introduced to his relationship with his father (played in this flashback by Alex Hyde-White) which shows how he may also feel inclined to do dangerous things and acquire highly sought after relics for the purpose of getting his father’s attention which he never receives since his father is too preoccupied with his hobby of chronicling the path to finding the Holy Grail. These and several other little details are made aware to us in this opening which once again also serves as a pretty solid short film on its own as well.
Another detail that’s brought up in this opening is also the origin of Indiana’s snake phobia, which is honestly the one detail that I’m not so sure adds up. It’s shown how when Indy is trying to escape from the supposed looters, he ends up on a circus train and travels through several different animal cars. In the reptile section he ends up falling into a box full of snakes and getting covered in them by accident which is the catalyst for his future snake phobia. While I’m in no way saying that this would be a pleasant experience, I’m just not sure that this moment on its own would be enough to create a lifelong snake phobia. Personally I think it would be much funnier if it’s never explained why Indy has a fear of snakes. They could still show in this intro how when Indy is explaining to his boy scout friend Herman (played by J. J. Hardy) what should be done about the looters Indy throws a snake to the side without a second thought indicating that his phobia was created at some point throughout his adventures, but then never show what caused it. Instead they could have in a movie like Kingdom of the Crystal Skull one of the characters ask him at some point why he hates snakes so much and he responds something to the effect of “I don’t want to talk about it” making it kinda creepy and kinda funny at the same time. Either way, this opening is still pretty solid and fun much like the Raiders intro as well. Maybe not of the same caliber as that one, but still pretty good.
After the flashback, we flash forward to the year 1938 where Indiana (played a third time by Harrison Ford) is once again attempting to get the Cross of Coronado, since he couldn’t get it in the flashback, from its owner only credited as “Panama Hat” (played by Paul Maxwell). At this point Indiana Jones is officially Indiana Jones so he’s able to get it fairly easily and Panama Hat along with his crew are killed when his ship blows up on the water in the middle of a storm. Surprisingly it wasn’t Indiana who killed them, this time it was a complete accident. This never comes back into play later in the movie, but at least we can be proud of how much Indy has grown up. Back at Dr. Jones’ University, we see how after getting the Cross he’s actually been shirking his responsibilities as a professor lately since his students are all clamoring to get some answers from him about papers, tests, and grades. Seems like his night life has overtaken his day job in recent years, because while he manages to escape his students (with his trusty fedora of course) he’s quickly flagged down by some unknown people in a car who take him to a pretty swanky house.
This house happens to be the property of a certain Walter Donovan (played by Julian Glover) who brought him here to take a look at a recent discovery he’s made. Even before we know Donovan is going to be the villain of this movie, we can see just how obsessed he is with antiquities in his intro and how he sees them less like an important part of history that needs to be preserved and more like a high-end baseball card collection. He’s an overzealous rich snob who just wants to be the one to say he has this or that object in his collection and nothing else, even going so far as to partner with the worst of humanity in order to acquire them. Here we see that Donovan has found a broken piece of a tablet that’s the first of two markers that lays out the location of the Holy Grail and he also tells Indy that he’s already gotten a hold of his father to aid him in the search, but he’s disappeared. One of this movie’s strengths is getting the audience to care about this character quickly, mostly due to Indy’s reaction to hearing his father is missing. We never see his face, but in a low-angle shot we see him grip his fedora a little tighter upon hearing the news. We’ve only seen Indy’s dad once for less than a minute so far in this movie, he was a total jerk to his son, and yet I still am just as worried about him as Indy is.
Indiana decides to check on his father at home, but only finds his house completely ransacked with today’s mail opened. That’s when he remembers that earlier, back at his University, he received a package from Venice, Italy which was the last known location of his father as Donovan described. Which also makes me wonder why he thought he’d be at home. Kinda weird. One of the things I have a bit of a problem with in the beginning of this movie is that it can be a bit hard to follow why characters do what they do. Later it’s assumed that Donovan and his Nazi sleeping buddies captured Indy’s dad for the sake of luring Indy out, but why would they want to get in contact with Indy in the first place? Did they forget that Indiana Jones is Indiana Jones and he’d probably be able to take them down in a 2 hour running time or less? I suppose you could infer that Donovan and the Nazis think there’s no way Indiana Jones would be able to take them down despite the fact he did exactly that 2 years prior (movie-verse time) when they tried to steal the Ark of the Covenant, being the snobby overconfident types that they are. To me it still seems like a major lapse in logic though.
Either way, part of that is to be expected in these movies at this point, because much like I mentioned in my two previous reviews, the logic in these movies is waved for the purposes of giving us an unforgettable, heart-pounding adventure. I give leeway for the moments that enhance the fun of the movies and are cool/entertaining, and do not give leeway for the moments that aren’t fun and are dumb/annoying. If you manage to look past these details, I’d say the movie is still pretty fun, so let’s get to the rest of it. So, in the package was Daddy Jones’ Grail Diary, a collection of all the bits of info on the Grail he’s collected over the course of 40 years which prompts Indy to take Donovan up on his offer of getting 2 tickets to Venice to pick up where Daddy left off and find out where he went. Along with Marcus Brody (played again by Denholm Elliott), Indiana finds Professor Jones’ partner Dr. Elsa Schneider (played by Allison Doody) who immediately raises…suspicions. One of the first things out of her mouth is how Indiana has his father’s eyes. Wouldn’t you tell that to someone you just met?
She leads Indy and Brody back to the library where Professor Jones was last seen and find out that he discovered before going missing that there was a tomb in the library, since the library used to be a church, and the second marker is buried in it along with one of the knights of the First Crusade. Through some clever puzzle solving, they find its location and break into it. This raises no suspicions from the librarian because he’s comedically stamping books at the same time they’re smashing the tiled floor. When I first saw this I also thought it was a bit of a stretch, but Elsa actually explains before entering the library that the library is closing soon and that she’s arranged for the staff to allow them to stay longer after. Still kind of a stretch that the librarian wouldn’t just look up to see them smashing the floor in, but I suppose it’s kinda funny. Elsa and Indy drop themselves into the tomb and make their way past rats, a petroleum river, and in-universe movie references to Sir Richard’s tomb where they find the second marker. Another way to see how Elsa isn’t normal is that after being lowered into a pit full of skulls and bones, she just smiles. That’s not strange at all.
However, another group of people follow Elsa and Indiana and set fire to the petroleum river to try to kill them. They of course escape which kicks off a classic Indiana Jones chase sequence which is different for taking place in the rivers of Venice on boats instead of cars like normal. See, it’s not the same thing if it’s on the water. I shouldn’t be too hard on it though, because that’s literally what these movies are known for are its chase sequences. Eventually, Indiana catches the lead assassin and tries to get him to say where his father is, but the assassin seems completely comfortable with dying. As a result, Indiana spares the assassin who divulges that his name is Kazim (played by Kevork Malikyan) and he’s a member of a secret organization called the Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword which has sworn for years to keep the Holy Grail safe from plunderers. They seem to be doing a bang-up job at it too. If I’m being honest, Kazim and the Brotherhood doesn’t end up doing that much by the end of the movie besides building up the Grail as the truly powerful relic that it is in which no one person can really be trusted to look after it, but unlike most other groups in movies like this that have one job and can’t freaking do it, Kazim’s group at least tries their best, and in their defense, nobody else has ever come this far in the quest for the Grail.
Since Elsa and Indy spared his life, he lets them know Indy’s dad is being kept in the Castle Brunwald in Salzburg, Austria. Before they go, Indy and Brody discover where to begin there quest for the Grail with the information they got from the second marker, Indy discovers his and Elsa’s room ransacked as well, and he and Elsa have a quick nookie session. Elsa is just another one of Indy’s hos-on-the-go so she doesn’t offer a whole lot throughout the movie. She does have a pretty big secret that’s revealed later, but we’ll get into that when we get into that. In Austria, she and Indy break through the castle’s butler security through a comedy routine you either like or don’t like, and sneak through to find where Indy’s dad is being kept. Let it be known though that someone got paid to have Indiana Jones say the line “Nazis, I hate these guys” like a sitcom character with a catch-phrase. After that bit of awkwardness, Indy breaks into his father’s room where he’s promptly hit over the head with a vase by said father. One thing I can say is that everything you need to know about Henry Jones (played by the late great Sean Connery) is shown in this scene:
Addressing his son not in a way that shows concern for his well-being or surprise that he’s just crashed through his window, but more irritation that he’s here when he isn’t supposed to be. This is essentially his whole character: gruff, stern, and hardened. He’s not the kind of father you’d expect a lot of sympathy from or the kind that would be interested in what his son does with his life, it would certainly take a quest for a biblical relic and nearly dying to make him see things differently. Before I move on, I’d also just like to point out the relationship between Indiana and Henry is instantly believable. It’s obvious Ford and Connery worked hard to get their relationship down, because whenever you see them interact with each other you really feel like these two are estranged father and son. Funny enough though, crashing through a window makes a lot of noise, so they’re quickly discovered by Nazis, and it seems like Indiana and Henry are doing pretty well at first with Indiana mowing down a few of them and startling his father in the process, until they come across our side antagonist Colonel Vogel (played by Michael Byrne) who’s taken Elsa hostage. You totally forgot she was here didn’t you? I did.
Vogel says if Indy doesn’t put down his gun he’ll shoot her, but Henry says Elsa is a Nazi. Indy doesn’t listen to his father and relinquishes the gun only to have Elsa backstab him because, as it turns out, Henry was right: she is a Nazi. The part she essentially ends up playing in the movie from here on is making Indy more cautious about who he has sex with and it’s sort of hinted at that she was forced into being a Nazi since she has a few moments later in the movie where she seems to have sympathy for Indy, experiences regret for her actions, and actively screws Donovan and the Nazis over, but we don’t really know much about her outside of that. She’s a bit of a wildcard and difficult to pin down, so I could never get that invested in her character. Either way, it’s because of her deception that Indy and Henry get captured and it’s officially revealed that Donovan is working with the Nazis to recover the Holy Grail.
They steal the Grail Diary but the map pages are missing because Indy ripped them out and gave them to Marcus. Marcus then called for Sallah (played again by John Rhys-Davies) who met him in the city of Iskenderun which sits upon the ruins of the city of Alexandretta which was revealed earlier to be the starting place for following the map to the Grail. Indy boasts that Marcus is a skilled man who will be able to disappear into any crowd and could find the Grail on his own to throw his enemies off guard, but as it turns out, Marcus is kind of a dork with no real skills in any of those fields. By the time Sallah meets Marcus in Iskenderun, he’s quickly discovered by their enemies and captured in quite possibly the most creatively ridiculous way anyone has ever been captured in these movies. Sallah tells Marcus to hide in a nearby shop and escape through the back door, but the shop isn’t actually a shop. It’s actually an armored truck disguised as a shop and once Marcus is inside, the door is closed on him and he’s driven away. Don’t feel too bad Sallah, if anything it was a little funny.
Meanwhile, back with Indy and Henry, they’re left in Austria tied to a chair with no supervision allowing them to escape by setting the castle on fire and driving away in a motorcycle resulting in another fun chase scene ending with an argument between Indy and Henry. Indy wants to go to Iskenderun to get Marcus, but Henry wants to go to Berlin to get his diary back. It’s only now that Henry says there’s some important info in the diary he forgot about and they need it to be prepared for the final Grail challenges, so Indy reluctantly decides to go there. Once in Berlin, we’re treated to the lovely sight of a book burning and Indy forcefully takes the diary back from Elsa. On their way back out, Indy is lucky enough to get an autograph from the last person anyone would ever want an autograph from.
He and his father then take the first zeppelin out of Germany and disconnect the aircraft’s radio to prevent anyone from calling back to Berlin reporting fugitives on board. The German pilots recognize this fairly quickly though forcing Indy and Henry to escape on a convenient bi-plane attached to the zeppelin where they’re chased yet again, this time by fighter pilots. I like how with Henry’s character they also address how what Indiana does for a living is pretty messed up, because to him, and us the audience, we’re pretty used to seeing him kill people left and right all the time, but with Henry along for the ride, he acknowledges how all this is of course a new experience for him. I’m also left to think that if I saw stuff like this in real life, I’d be pretty freaked out too, just like Henry. We briefly flash to the Republic of Hatay where we see Donovan and his lackeys bribe the Sultan (played by Alexei Sayle) into giving them troops and other forms of support including a mother-flipping tank. I was only just made aware of this state’s existence and I had no idea they had freaking tanks at their disposal!
This also comes as a surprise to our good guys after they meet up with Sallah in a jump-cut and catch up with Donovan’s crew to try to rescue Brody. Here not only are we once again shown a pretty fun action sequence (only after writing that did I notice just how many of these are in this movie and series as a whole) with Indy trying to take on a tank by himself and even Henry comes into his own a bit and manages to take out a couple Nazis himself. One he even defeats through a method that would make Jack Nicholson’s Joker proud.
After a long, drawn-out sequence building to the inevitable comeuppance of our side-antagonist Colonel Vogel by him getting thrown over a cliff while still in the tank, we also see another Indiana Jones death fake-out. This one stands out to me however when compared to other Jones death fake-outs, because it focuses less on trying to trick you into thinking he’s dead (because by this point nobody’s buying that) but rather it focuses on Henry’s reaction to thinking his son is dead. In this moment we see a different side of him where he regrets not being a better father to him and not telling him what he’s always wanted to tell him. We never find out what he wanted to tell him, but even never knowing that information, this scene still works pretty well in showing how Henry likely puts on a facade for the sake of his son (most likely to prove to him that he’s strong) and never loved him in the way he should have. Part of what makes this scene work so well is also Sean Connery’s acting pedigree, because his delivery makes me want to tear up every time.
Eventually it’s revealed he isn’t dead (duh) in a pretty comedic way I might add, and they finally make their way to the end of the movie in the Grail Temple. Donovan’s crew is already there but they’re failing pretty miserably at getting past the Temple’s first booby trap. It doesn’t take long for Indy’s gang to get spotted and Donovan decides he wants Indy to get the Holy Grail for him, so to properly motivate him he shoots his father. This guy is just a deliciously devilish douchebag. I like d-words right now. At this point the tension shoots through the roof, especially after that scene we just had not long ago where Henry showed us how many layers he was hiding beneath the surface, and it gets the audience to care for him all the more after we see that he might die. Since he’s mortally wounded, the only thing that can save him is the Big Man Upstairs and His magic cup, so best get goin’ Indy. He does just that and makes it past three trials which are all pretty cool except for maybe the first one that’s a bit less “holy” and a bit more “Intro Temple from Raiders,” and makes it to the chamber of the Grail where he finds the last remaining Grail Knight (played by Robert Eddison) waiting.
At first the knight attacks Indy because that’s what’s supposed to happen, but we don’t have time for that right now, and the knight is kinda…out of shape anyway. He tries to pass his honor to Indiana since he ‘vanquished’ him, but right then is when Donovan and Elsa walk in and try to recover the Grail. Psych! The room is full of Grails! Which one is it? You must choose, and choose wisely now because the Holy Grail will grant you life everlasting, but the Wrong Grail will rip it away from you. No pressure, there’s only hundreds of them. Donovan starts AP-ing pretty hard (Analysis Paralysis to the uninitiated) so he asks Elsa to pick one which she does. He drinks from it and…prepare yourself. While we’ve gone through a lot of different character deaths in these movies already, this one is quite possibly the most horrifying Indiana Jones death ever put to film. It still creeps me out to this day even after I’ve seen it several times, and it’s definitely one of the biggest takeaways you’ll have from this movie.
How do I say this? Donovan basically “ages” to death. That may not sound like much, but this is what it looks like:
‘Contains tobacco depictions’
What is it with Disney+ and tobacco depictions?
On the plus side, it’s immediately followed by this meme-able moment:
This also leads back to what I said about not being entirely sure what Elsa’s character was supposed to be, because remember she was the one who chose the Grail for Donovan to drink from, and she intentionally chose the wrong one for him. Why did she do that? It’s shown after Donovan shoots Henry that she’s remorseful for both him and Indy, but if I’m being honest it only makes me wish we got a chance to see more of her character in the first place. Not only that, but not long after recovering the Holy Grail we also see how Elsa still tries to take the Holy Grail for herself, so how are we supposed to know if this is in character or not? Anyway, back in the present Indy chooses wisely and saves his father as we all expected him to do, but like I said before, Elsa tries to take the Holy Grail beyond the Temple which the Grail Knight specifically told them not to do because staying in one place for all eternity is God’s ‘price of immortality’. By crossing the great seal on the floor with the Holy Grail, Elsa causes the Temple to collapse and she drops the Grail down a crevasse while Indy comes to her rescue.
Taking some of the issues I had before aside, this is probably one of my favorite scenes in the movie because we see Elsa hanging off the side of the same crevasse but since the Holy Grail is almost within reach she tears one of her hands away from Indy’s grip to try to grab it. Indy can’t hold her with only one hand, but Elsa never offers her other hand which results in Indy losing his grip and her falling to her death. After another tremor while the Temple collapses, Indy falls over the side of the crevasse as well and Henry grabs his arm to pull him back up. Much like Elsa before him though, Indy can almost reach the Grail so he’s too blinded by the potential of immortality to offer his other hand to his father. What snaps him back to reality though is his father calling him ‘Indiana’. Throughout the whole movie, Henry’s only called Indy ‘Junior’, so by suddenly calling him ‘Indiana’ he proves to Indy and the audience that what’s more important to him is not an ancient biblical artifact, but his son. Every time I see this I ‘Awwwww’ so hard and usually rewind it at least once to watch it again because it’s so friggin’ cute!
Indiana comes to his senses and takes his father’s hand, so they all can escape and live to tell this incredible story. Before we leave for real, we have a brief moment where Henry and Indy watch the Grail Knight salute them on their way out of the Temple and have a little discussion about what this experience has meant to them. Henry goes back to calling Indy ‘Junior’ again, but to me that only makes their relationship more believable. The one thing we’ve learned throughout this whole movie is that their relationship needs work, and in real life, one extreme moment like this isn’t enough on its own to create monumental change. If they want to repair this relationship, they’ll need to spend more time with each other and work it out in their own ways over a long period of time. We also find out that Henry calls Indy ‘Junior’ because his real name is Henry Jones Jr. He doesn’t just call him that because he’s his son, that’s literally his name: Junior. Apparently Indy got his chosen name from his favorite childhood pet which we saw momentarily in the Jones home in the flashback at the beginning of the film.
When all is said and done, our characters end up riding away from this crumbling temple on their horses and into the sunset. Of course ‘riding into the sunset’ is a cliche as old as time, but for me it’s really John Williams’ beautiful score that gets so much emotion out of these characters riding away as changed people. Not the Raider’s March which we’ve heard in every movie up until this point and has closed out every film, but rather the Grail theme that plays after it. With this music I really feel a sense of calm and contentment as if I was along for the ride with these characters for this wild adventure, because I kinda was, and we’re all going home together. Not only that, but it’s a great final shot to end on which closes out what’s probably my personal favorite Indiana Jones movie. Not by a whole lot when compared to the other good Indiana Jones movie, Raiders of the Lost Ark, but enough.
To me, this movie is doing what I thought Temple of Doom should’ve done. It takes the basic concept set up by the first movie and expands on it. Not only that but it keeps the energy high, the characters relatable with satisfying/believable arcs, and the tone that was set up by the first movie as well. If Raiders of the Lost Ark was the perfect introduction to this series, then this movie should’ve been the perfect ending to this series. Of course it ended up not being the end of the series as I’ll take a look at the worst of these films next week, but that’s next week and I want to enjoy as much of this series being good as I can! I suppose in the end I don’t have much else to say for this movie in particular other than if you’re still looking for a fun movie with memorable action, characters, and moments for your weekend movie night, look no further then Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade.
Given how much fun I had with this movie, I feel like it’s earned itself a rating of 4.5/5 rosary beads. Since I did still have a few problems with the movie kinda like with Raiders I couldn’t give it full marks, but it is still a pretty solid film and it accomplishes its goal well.
Other Indy Reviews
Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark
Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom
Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
(I make no claim of ownership for any of the images used in this post)
(Each of them are owned entirely by their respective copyright holders, which are not me)
(I am just a humble blogger who talks about movies, I do not make them)
(Yet)
