Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade

With the arguable failure of the second film in the trilogy, the filmmakers felt they had to fall back onto tried-and-true methods. And, the first 15 minutes falls along exactly the same plot lines as the first film -- thrilling chase, back at the university, Marcus Brody and he at a house, flying to their destination, more exciting chases. But, hey, tried-and-true can be comforting sometimes. And, in this case, things get a kick in the pants when Sean Connery shows up. I've always been somewhat iffy on both leading men (they seem fairly stuck up), but in this film at least Connery gets to show his chops. Not that Harrison Ford is any slouch, but we're used to him from the other two films, so he's nothing new. A distant, equally driven, foreboding father -- now that's something interesting. And Connery plays it straight, which makes the character much funnier than the filmmakers perhaps intended him to be. The plot follows the usual Terry and the Pirates type plot of the other two -- high adventure in exotic places, in this case fighting Nazis (again) to recover The Holy Grail (instead of the Ark of the Covenant). Unfortunately, the DVDs come as a trilogy set, but the second one isn't so bad on later viewing. Now I just have to get around to writing those reviews...

year: 1989
length: 127 min.
rating: 3.5
IMDB link: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097576/combined