Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989) Film Review

Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade (1989) Director: Steven Spielberg

“Nazis… I hate these guys.”

★★★★★

The Last Crusade offers a wonderful return to the high drama, action-adventure thrills previously established in the original movie Raiders of the Lost Ark. The plot of The Last Crusade alludes to all manner of archeological mysteries and Arthurian legends as well as the Crusades and medieval Christian romances. It has sometimes been referred to as Steven Spielberg’s apology for the darkly unpopular sequel Temple of Doom in 1984. For this final film (or at least what should have been a final film in the series), we see Indiana Jones again reprised by Harrison Ford as he teams up with his father, played by Sean Connery, in order to track down the Holy Grail before the Nazis do. The “Odd Couple” dynamic between Indiana Jones and his father plays well in this film, despite the fact that Sean Connery was a mere 13 years older than Harrison Ford at the time. In addition to a comical and quirky portrayal of Indiana Jones’s father by Sean Connery, we also see River Phoenix (Joaquin Phoenix’s older brother who tragically died of drug overdose a few years later in 1993) in the role of a young Indiana Jones.

The Last Crusade remains a fun installment in the Indiana Jones series. And no reflection on this film would be complete without mentioning John Williams’s genre-defining score. Apparently, George Lucas’s original concept for the film involved a haunted mansion and the search for the fountain of youth, but this was quickly scrapped (it was originally going to be title Indiana Jones and the Monkey King). Thankfully, this did not materialize.

We begin with a prelude –it is Utah in 1912 and a young Indiana Jones (River Phoenix) with his troop of boy scouts stumbles upon a group of bandits who have uncovered Coronado’s Cross in a desert cave. Young Indy steals the cross and escapes on a passing circus train where he first uses a whip against a lion, receives his characteristic chin scar, and has a frightening encounter with a water snake (perhaps this is what leads to his lifelong ophidiophobia) but in the end, the sheriff compels young Indy to return the stolen cross to the bandits who give it to a suit-wearing man. One of the mysterious bandits is clearly the inspiration for future adult Indiana Jones’s trademark outfit. This whole prelude sequence is fun, but very much a ridiculous and on-the-nose bit of nostalgia-bait.

The rest of the film is set two years after the events of Raiders of the Lost Ark –beginning on the Portuguese Coast in 1938. Indiana Jones has returned from an adventure at sea recovering Coronado’s Cross (again) to his job as a professor, but he is mobbed by a large group of students fawning over him. When he escapes out his office window Indy is stopped by a pair of men working for Walter Donovan (Julian Glover), a wealthy businessman who is obsessed with the Holy Grail. Previously, Donovan had hired Indy’s father, Henry Jones (Indiana’s real name is also Henry but he prefers Indiana like his and George Lucas’s dog). His father is an expert on the Grail and Donovan has hired him to locate it but Jones Sr. the “project leader” has since gone missing. As a bit of backstory, Donovan explains that the Holy Grail was entrusted to Joseph of Arimathea before it disappeared for a thousand years. It was then apparently found by three knights of the first crusade, all three of them brothers. According to legend, two of these brothers emerged out of the desert 150 years after finding the Grail, but only one of them survived. And before dying of extreme old age, he imparted his tale to a Franciscan Friar. The Friar then chronicled the story in a manuscript which describes two markers leading the way to the Grail. Donovan claims to possess one of these markers, a tablet his engineers unearthed mining for copper. The second marker is entombed with the the knight’s dead brother located in Venice, Italy.

Indy visits his father’s home which has been ransacked but he discovers a diary that has been sent home –it contains many notes and maps on the whereabouts of the Grail. Indy then travels to Venice with his friend Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott) with the diary where he meets with Dr. Elsa Snyder (Alison Doody, former Bond girl in A View To A Kill), his father’s research colleague abroad who is working for Donovan, and they enter the library where Henry Jones disappeared. Beneath this library, in the catacombs, they uncover the tomb of the knight of the First Crusade (here there is a nice nod to Raiders of the Lost Ark in which Elsa spots an engraving of the Ark of the Covenant –she asks Indy “are you sure” this is the Ark of the Covenant? And Indy responds “pretty sure…”). With the ground filled with petroleum, they are quickly attacked by a secret brotherhood (“The Brotherhood of the Cruciform Sword”) that is tasked with protecting the Grail. Indy and Elsa escape on a wild boat chase before capturing one member of the brotherhood named Kazim who informs them that Indy’s father is being held at the Castle of Brunwald on the Austrian-German border where Indy’s father is being held captive. Indy (or “Junior”) finds his father and they are captured when they discover that both Elsa and Donovan have been working for the Nazis this whole time. Indy and his father are tied up and left in the castle, when Henry accidentally sets the room on fire. Its leads to some hijinks with a rotating fireplace, along with secret passages, before Indy and his father hop in a motorcycle with a sidecar and track Elsa to a Nazi book-burning rally –there is an amusing moment wherein Indy, disguised as a Nazi, comes face to face with Hitler who signs Indy’s father’s diary– before they try to escape in a Zeppelin and then in a small plane in a dogfight.

The ending to The Last Crusade contains the strongest echoes of Raiders. Marcus Brody arrives in Eskenderun (a modern city in Turkey that has been built over the ancient city of Alexandretta). Here, he meets up with Jones’s old friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) and all parties converge in the desert as the Brotherhood attacks the Nazis, but the Nazis get the upper hand in an extended tank chase sequence. Indy’s father is shot by the traitorous Nazis –Donovan and Snyder– and he must pass a series of tests in a subterranean cavern inside the “Canyon of the Crescent Moon” (not unlike the beginning of Raiders) before arriving at the Grail to save his father from certain death. When he finally arrives there is a lone, elderly knight sitting in wait (played by 80 year-old legendary stage actor Robert Eddison). He is the last of the three brothers who was sent to find and guard the Grail (he has been waiting for 700 years). A series of false grails are collected around the room, and Donovan naturally selects an incorrect Grail leading to his crumbling death –an amusing allusion to the melting sequences in Raiders. Meanwhile Indy drinks from a simple-looking cup that turns out to be correct. He uses it to save his father, but Elsa Snyder tries to steal the Grail leading to the collapse of the cave and she falls to her death. Amidst the collapsing edifice Indy tries to save the Grail but he is prevented by his father –“let it go,” he says. Again, in The Last Crusade the true heroes relinquish their maddening quest to collect ancient sacred relics. Instead, they simply prevent lesser people, like the Nazis, from empowering themselves. And the film ends with a wonderful scene of Indiana Jones, his father, Sallah, and Marcus Brody riding off into the sunset (this iconic scene was shot in Texas).

Throughout the film, the father-son chemistry between Sean Connery and Harrison Ford is delightful –whereas the two earlier films contained elements of the screwball comedy archetype, The Last Crusade is more of a buddy comedy. The tone of The Last Crusade is light, campy, and fun. Surprisingly, as time went by Harrison Ford (a man with a reputation for being a curmudgeon who always seems to want his characters killed off) pressured George Lucas and Steven Spielberg to resurrect the Indiana Jones franchise, however the resulting film, The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008, was a massive disappointment –far and away the worst in the series (thus far).

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• Director: Steven Spielberg
• Screenplay by: Jeffrey Boam
• Story by: George Lucas and Menno Meyjes
• Produced by: Robert Watts
• Starring:
  • Harrison Ford…..Indiana Jones (River Phoenix plays young Indiana Jones). His real name is Henry Jones, Jr. (they named the dog “Indiana” –a nod George Lucas’s dog).
  • Sean Connery…..Henry Jones, Sr., Indiana Jones’s father, a professor of Medieval literature who cared more about looking for the Grail than raising his son.
  • Julian Glover…..Walter Donovan, an American businessman who sends the Joneses on their quest for the Holy Grail out of a desire for immortality while secretly working with the Nazis. Glover previously appeared as General Veers in Lucas’s The Empire Strikes Back. He adopted an American accent for the film, but was dissatisfied with the result.
  • Denholm Elliott…..Marcus Brody, Indiana’s bumbling English colleague who previously appeared in Raider of the Lost Ark.
  • Alison Doody…..Dr. Elsa Schneider, an Austrian art professor and Indy’s love interest, who is in league with the Nazis. Doody previously appeared as Jenny Flex in the James Bond film A View to a Kill (1985).
  • John Rhys-Davies…..Sallah, a friend of Indiana and a professional excavator living in Cairo, who previously appeared in Raiders of the Lost Ark.
• Cinematography by: Douglas Slocombe
• Edited by: Michael Kahn
• Music by: John Williams
• Production Company: Lucasfilm Ltd.
• Distribution Company: Paramount Pictures
• Other Facts:
  • Indiana Jones’s assistant at Marshall College is apparently a woman named Irene.
  • Steven Spielberg later claimed that he made The Last Crusade as an apology of sorts for its predecessor The Temple of Doom.
  • Several early drafts of the script involved a haunted castle and Jones having a romance with a nun.
  • Celebrated playwright Tom Stoppard contributed the bulk of the material between Indiana Jones and his father but he didn’t receive a writing credit.
  • Much of The Last Crusade was shot in Petra, Jordan, and Spielberg befriended King Hussein bin Talal and Queen Noor.
  • Steven Spielberg always wanted to direct a James Bond movie, and he was thrilled when Sean Connery agreed to played Indiana Jones’s father for The Last Crusade.
  • There is a line in the film wherein Henry Jones, Sr. (Sean Connery) is asked how he knew Elsa was a Nazi. Connery ad-libbed the line that she “talks in her sleep.” This off-the-cuff remark left the whole cast and crew in stitches, and Spielberg promised to keep it in the final cut.
  • Every villain who tries to kill Indy can be seen wearing a flower pin in this film.