Awards Season Feature Post

Awards Season 2015-16 Scoreboard

Carol Keeping a tally of the (wins/nominations) for this year's awards season. Scroll down way below to see which Awards are being...

Mar 11, 2012

My Review for RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (INDIANA JONES).


Starring:
                  Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm Elliott, Wolf Kahler, Alfred Molina, Vic Tablian, Frank Marshall, Pat Roach and Dennis Muren.


Directed By:
                         Steven Spielberg.



Review:
                Raiders of the Lost Ark is the first movie in the widely popular action-adventure movie series by the wonderful Steven Spielberg called Indiana Jones as you all know and produced by George Lucas. Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the best action adventure movies ever made with non stop fun, excitement and action that keeps you on the edge while not taking everything so serious. The humor in this movie is just fantastic and not gets over the movie but really helps in making the experience more fun. This was the only movie in the series nominated for Best Picture and Director Oscar while it won for Sound, Film Editing, Art Direction, Visual Effects and a special award for Sound Effects Editing while other 2 nominations include Cinematography and Original Score and is added in the AFI's 100 movies list. One of the top grossing movies ever and the highest grossing movie of 1981 this is a pop culture phenomenon while still a classic if you just talk about the cinema. Indiana Jones is an archeology professor who sometimes embarks on exciting adventures to get important and precious artifacts. This movie begins with one too when he is about to get a golden idol. Later back in US, two Army Intelligence agents meets him to inform about a Nazis quest to gain some mysterious power. For that they need the headpiece for the direction of the area which as for now is said to be with Indiana's old mentor Abner Ravenwood so they are searching for him. That Tanis has the location of the Ark of the Covenant which is a biblical chest that contains fragments of the Ten Commandments and if Nazis get it, they will become invincible. Agents tell him to get it only for the museum and so he sets on this journey, he first flees to Nepal only to find that Ravenwood died and the key is with his daughter and Indiana's former lover Marion. There we see a big fight followed by a fire in Marion's tavern as some of the Nazis men raids for the headpiece.


               They both flee to Cairo where Indiana's friend Sallah tells him about Nazis already digging the place to find the Well of Souls and Sallah is a very skilled digger working there. In a bazaar, Marion is kidnapped by the Nazis men after a long chase and later Indiana and Sallah finds that Nazis have miscalculated so they are digging the wrong place. With the help of their own staff they finds the Well which is filled with snakes but he gets the Ark anyway while the Nazis men arrives to take it from him and throws Marion in the well too but they later escapes from there. After a big explosion filled fight and he take the Ark and gets on the truck, they both get on the streamer and sets off for England but the next day Nazis boat arrives to get both Ark and Marion but Indiana Jones somehow manages to get on there boat and follows them to the place where they would test the power of the Ark before presenting it to the Nazis. I think i should stop right here with the plot because it is getting very long. Movies like these are seen by almost everyone so i don't hesitate in giving away almost the entire plot. So Spielberg surely knows how to make such big movies and gets a big revenue for that which is not a bad thing if the movie are meaningful and actually enjoyable instead of all the nonsense we see these days. This is a non stop action filled movie with scene after scene those things just keeps piling on and they makes it so much fun. One of the best action scenes i have seen from a movie of that times, they are so effective that it just makes it much more fun, exciting and enjoyable than anything else. It has amazing cinematography and art direction with a wonderful score by Spielberg's longtime friend John Williams, the main Indie's theme is such a phenomenon as you all know. Movie is a technical marvel and has perfect Editing work for both movie and sound as well as good Visual Effects and everything else.


             Movie is written very well, exactly how a movie like this should be written with no dull moments and if not physical excitement all the time but a whole lot of intelligent things going on even when they are just talking. What i mean to say is that adventure action movie doesn't necessarily needs big action moments all the time but there should be enough things in the other moments that an audience can keep involve through their mind and they should constantly think about what is going on and what might happen. Steven Spielberg is one of my favorite directors from Hollywood and a most favorite for these sort of movies. he really made it a wonderful movie that people can enjoy any day and any hour they want for the rest of their lives. This movie would never gets old and never date at all. Reading about how George Lucas and Steven Spielberg actually developed this movie is such a fantastic thing to read. Harrison Ford in this iconic role is very perfectly cast, he was in Lucas' Star Wars as Han Solo which they really liked so he was casted. Ford is someone people know mostly because of this movie because he got the title role here with so much more to offer. I think he performed really well and i just can't imagine anyone else doing it instead of him. Physically fit, good looking with the whole attitude, persona and humor to him that makes him a perfect Indiana Jones.


             I love many scenes in the movie like how it begin the whole temple chase thing was really fun. The final scenes were one of a kind when the men tries to check the power of the Ark and we see these spirits coming out of it and destroying everyone. Heads of everyone either gets melted or exploded as they look directly to it. Indiana Jones as a character refused all the supernatural stories behind every discoveries he made but his belief was shaken up here. The fight scenes are choreographed very well and brilliantly shot and presented. This is not a mindless fun but really something you would love watching.

Grade: A

No comments:

Post a Comment