Older Indy can't sustain energy levels

NINETEEN years after he last cracked that stockwhip, and 27 years since he first appeared, Indiana Jones is back.

NINETEEN years after he last cracked that stockwhip, and 27 years since he first appeared, Indiana Jones is back.

The adventurer hero, played by Harrison Ford, looks greyer and older these days (Shia LaBeouf as his youthful sidekick Mutt unkindly asks his age: “What are you, like, 80?”).

But Ford or, more probably, his stuntman stand-in, still has boundless energy. Unfortunately, the fourth Indy feature, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, is only fitfully energised.

It opens very well with the invasion of a high-security US military camp in the Nevada desert in 1957, the height of the Cold War, by a group of Russians. They are led by KGB officer Irina Spalkow (Cate Blanchett), proud recipient of no fewer than three Orders of Lenin and a formidable foe, especially when wielding a sabre.

Spalkow wants Indy, and his not entirely trustworthy sidekick, Mac (Ray Winstone), to help her find a crystal skull which, if returned to its origins in the jungles of Peru, promises boundless knowledge or some such notion.

Of course the plot - handled by Steven Spielberg with an at times surprisingly heavy hand - isn't the point of these films, which is why there seems rather too much of it here. It's just an excuse for some spectacularly staged chases and narrow escapes, most of which are so obviously computer-generated you long for the relative simplicity of the original film.

There are chases through the desert, with Indy surviving a nuclear test explosion, around the leafy corridors of a university, and through the jungle.

There are savage natives who blow poison-darts, an enormous snake, some very nasty insects, quicksand, collapsing ancient temples and, most spectacularly, three imposing waterfalls. The ending suggests that Close Encounters of the Third Kind has mysteriously merged with the Indiana Jones formula.

There's also the return of Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen), not seen since Raiders of the Lost Ark, but who is as feisty and combative as ever. Nostalgic references are made to Indy's mentor, Marcus (the late Denholm Elliott) and his father (Sean Connery).

For a generation that has only seen Indiana Jones on television, the experience of taking part in his increasingly improbable adventures on the big screen will be an essential one.

If only the screenplay by David Koepp had been wittier and sharper this might have been as good as the first of the series, because the ideas are promising and Blanchett is a formidable villain, though she is not used as well as she might have been.

- Indiana Jones and the Legend of the Crystal Skull is in national release from Thursday. A full review by Evan Williams appears in The Weekend Australian Review on Saturday.