Raiders of the Lost Ark: Indy’s first adventure is as good as you remember
Review Overview
Action
10Comedy
10Romance
10Mark Harrison | On 28, Jun 2023
Director: Steven Spielberg
Cast: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, John Rhys Davies, Ronald Lacey
Certificate: PG
From the very moment Harrison Ford first turns to face the camera in Raiders of the Lost Ark, Indiana Jones is an icon. Dreamt up by producer George Lucas, director Steven Spielberg, and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan, the film is the product of many ideas and influences, most proudly 1930s adventure serials, but the sum of its parts is one of the greatest action movies ever made.
Immediately after an iconic, booby-trap-laden prologue set in 1936, Dr Henry “Indiana” Jones Jr is introduced as a professor of archaeology, an expert on the occult, and an ‘obtainer of rare antiquities’. That’s why the US government drafts him into a race against the Nazis for the legendary Ark of the Covenant, a powerful biblical artefact that would make their army invincible.
Falling back in with his old flame, Marion (Karen Allen), and clashing with his arch-rival, Belloq (Paul Freeman), Indy’s non-stop adventure ranges from the Himalayas to the Mediterranean and reckons with the power of God himself. If you were inclined, you could break this rollicking feature into 12 separate episodes and run them on Saturday mornings like some of the serials that inspired it, but run together, it’s like a rollercoaster.
At one point, Indy says he’s making this up as he goes, and there’s a spontaneity born of the collaboration between the main movers in this franchise-starter. Lucas dusted off his “Indiana Smith” idea after finding huge success in Star Wars as a pastiche of various influences. Spielberg was working with a self-imposed budget and schedule after his first high-profile disappointment, the wartime comedy 1941. And despite a near-miss with Tom Selleck, it’s Ford who’s perfectly cast as this anti-hero, an endlessly watchable figure who transgresses and fails along the way, but essentially keeps going because that’s who he is.
Kasdan’s role cannot be overstated either, with a screenplay that finds clean lines through the action with a series of two-handers in between the crunchy fights, the thrilling chases and the daring escapes. Though impressive enough on paper, that witty, propulsive, immaculate script evolved through production in the spirit of improvisation – most famously, a sword fight was reduced to a single gunshot when Ford fell ill on the day of filming, but also, Allen and Freeman developed scenes such as Marion and Belloq getting drunk in the Nazis camp.
Like Star Wars, it’s a pastiche that’s inspired countless other pastiches, but Raiders is the sort of film that’s difficult to replicate even by most of the same people in its own sequels. It’s a film as funny, exciting, scary and magical as the people making it remember those movies they watched as kids being – all killer, no filler, and ruthlessly tuned in to the best bits.
As though dancing over a trap-laden temple floor, it never puts a foot wrong, whether it’s Norman Reynolds’ dazzling production design, Deborah Nadoolman’s pitch-perfect costumes or John Williams’ rollicking musical score.
It’s magnificent, but also hard enough to take its bumps. The discourse around Indy’s illicit relationship with Marion when she was much younger is fuelled by the unearthing of a story conference transcript where Spielberg, Lucas and Kasdan discuss ideas that have always been tacit in the dialogue. The film is not unaware that he did a bad thing but given how Marion’s arc is about re-asserting herself as an adult and how well Allen plays that, your mileage on her representation may vary, even if the years between those two love interests don’t.
On the more media-illiterate side of things, there’s the take popularised by The Big Bang Theory, that the outcome would be the same had Indy gone home and left the Nazis to it. Cinema Sins-brain is a terrible affliction, but what’s important to note in this case is that while this “ding” is technically correct, it’s neither interesting nor entertaining. As a movie, this is both, and we wouldn’t have it any other way.
Jam-packed with non-stop action, comedy, and romance over its 115 minutes, Raiders Of The Lost Ark is an all-timer – a film that’s impossibly just as good as you remember it every time you revisit it. From its perfect casting to its dark sense of humour, this is breathless, brilliant and, frankly, even four films and 42 years later, utterly unrepeatable.