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by PINAKI CHAKRAVARTY

Every once in a while, a long-dead
legend needs to crack his whip

Once asked if he’d ever want to play Indiana Jones again, Harrison Ford said, “In a New York minute.” That minute has arrived, with the actor playing the legendary role once again – in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull – more than two decades after the first time he donned the Fedora. The problem is, the moment might just have passed. A long time ago.

Once again, for the nth time, Steven Spielberg has re-hashed a formula that made a lot of money for too many years. George Lucas, dutifully obliging, re-hashed the special effects and Harisson Ford, well, you’ve already read the script way back in 1989, 1984 and 1981. But Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Raiders of the Lost Ark (notice how repeating a name too many times gets really boring?) were great for the Eighties, but the whole story was already being stretched a bit too thin by the time Sean Connery was playing Jones’ father in 1989. People want to be entertained but they don’t want to be cheated.

And after all the hype surrounding Spielberg, he might have started out with edgy films that no one saw (the excellent 1971 Duel) but he soon figured out which side the bread was buttered (ET, Gremlins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit). Appealing to audiences while still making good movies is a duality that seems to have died with the Eighties, though, for Hollywood’s favourite director has driven downhill ever since, audiences in tow. Think Men in Black (funny to some), Deep Impact (lousy), Artificial Intelligence (too long and too boring). He might have deserved a few points for Saving Private Ryan, but it was completely overshadowed by the mind-numbingly fantastic The Thin Red Line that released around the sametime. I won’t even mention The Terminal, where Tom Hanks insists on dragging us through JFK International.

And what about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which is quite a mouthful by the time you spell it out as you buy your ticket? Not bad entertainment of course, but the beginning is better than the end, and the end is too far away. Spielberg himself seems to have mellowed a bit, or maybe it’s just not good politics any more to have Indy shoot a sword-wielding Arab or delight in the pleasures of eyeballs rolling in one’s soup. All that was good fun, the best part. Now, though, the most the film can do is try to revive bits and pieces of the past: Ford looking at a framed photo of Connery on his desk, the inevitable underground tunnels that are, of course, booby-trapped, the promise of treasure.

Everyone goes to see this film because it revives a hero we all loved a long time ago. But the latest flick is just that, a revival of things past. What we really need is a film that stands on its own. Even if that means Indy cracking his whip every once in a while.