Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull 
I’m in two minds about the fourth Indiana Jones movie I have to say that I enjoyed the hell out of it, but it is flawed. Harrison Ford has proved that he’s still got it as Indy which ironically feeds into one of the film’s flaws and that is that there is too little of him doing what he’s good at in the final act of the movie.
It is a kind of best of album featuring callbacks or references to scenes and events from the previous three films and yet being set in the fifties it’s very much it’s own beast in a lot of ways. I’m not sure the Soviets make as good as a villain as the Nazis did and their characters are curiously underdeveloped. I recognised Andrew Divoff and Pavel Lychnikoff as Russian soldiers but in the film they are merely extras with little to no lines as far as I can recall which makes me wonder if they had fuller parts at one point that were cut in the edit.
I think the major flaw of the movie is that it feels bloated with cast and this impacts on other aspects of the film. I think Ray Winstone’s character could have been excised completely from the film or at least after the first act. Similarly with John Hurt’s character if he’d been killed by the Russians in the camp then that would have both given Indy a chance to be the brains of the operation in the final expedition and given a little more motivation to the trio of Indy, Mutt and Marion to beat the Russians.
I think that if like me you loved the first three Indiana Jones movies then you’ll most likely love this one too.
