Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

The very worst thing about INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL is John Hurt. Hurt plays an old friend and colleague of the Joneser, one who has lost his wits after peering too deeply into the eponymous Crystal Skull. The problem with this is that Hurt's performance recalls his Fool in the 1982 BBC production of KING LEAR. Attention filmmakers: if you want to drive a stake through the heart of your movie, cast a great character actor in a pale shadow of one of his career-high performances. It's a sure-fire way to get your audience thinking about how much better that other picture was than the one it's currently watching.

That may be the worst thing about Indy IV, but it has competition. The opening sequence, a car chase between people we don't care about and whom we'll never see again (punctuated with supposedly amusing animal reaction shots), starts the film on an offputting, wtf note. When the picture finally gets around to giving us Ford and Ray Winstone (clearly wishing he was in Ibiza), we've already nearly lost interest. Then Cate Blanchett shows up as the villain, she gets a boner joke, and the whole thing just runs off the rails.

Ok, I admit it. I wrote that whole paragraph just to find an excuse to work in a SEXY BEAST joke.

INDY IV is just plain boring. Dull. Flaccid. A yawner. And I like Spielberg. I like Ford. I like Allen, Winstone, LaBeouf, Blanchett, and Hurt. But my pulse never quickened. I never believed in what was happening. And at the climax, when I was supposed to be going, "Wow," I was only thinking, "Huh. Spielberg and Lucas didn't trust me enough to have the Blanchett speak Russian."

I may have seen this one for free, but I still want $10 back. For my time.

21

Recently, I flew a long trip with a copilot who knew one of the people involved in the MIT card counting scheme upon which the film _21_ is based. He hated the movie because it so distorted and sexed up the facts of the case that it barely deserved the label, "Based on a true story." I countered that _21_ had no obligation to be a faithful retelling of the actual events. Its only obligation, I asserted, was to be a good movie. He didn't buy it, but I stand by it. Narrative film's first duty is to entertain. If your picture can't do that, don't bother.

So, does _21_ entertain? Yes, it does, though not particularly well. The film tells a (sexed up) version of the MIT card counting story, in which a team of MIT math wizards mastered the only way to beat the house at blackjack. It throws in some sex, some violence, some cool, and generally keeps things rocking along for an hour and a half. It doesn't blow you away; it doesn't stay with you; but it eats the time on a transatlantic flight well enough.

Not exactly a ringing endorsement, is it? Perhaps if it were more true to life.