My DVDs: Action

Love The Princess Bride? (and if not, why not?) you need to see this. The finest swashbuckler there is with a fantastic, charismatic, performance from Errol Flynn; the definitive Robin Hood and the second greatest swordfight ever filmed.

Just about the perfect action film. Bruce Willis contributes an iconic and much mimicked performance as John McClane and the script is much more intelligent than that of your typical actioner, allowing the audience more knowledge than the characters (something Hitchcock always knew was a perfect recipe for suspense). Alan Rickman's scenery chewing is also a ot of fun. Obviously though it's the action and the one liners that are the main draw and both are brilliant. The action is clever, varied, and exciting but director John McTiernan is smart enough to let us draw breath after each. Really what can be said but... Yippe ki yay motherfucker.

Anyone who loves this film should track down John Woo's Hong Kong movies. Try The Killer, Hard Boiled and Bullett in the Head, theey all make Face/Off look like the work of an amateur.

1938. Indiana Jones (Ford) recieves word that his Father (Connery) has gone missing while assisting a Dr Schnieder (Doody) in the hunt for the Holy Grail. Indy must first save his Dad from the Nazis who have kidnapped him, hoping to get the Grail themselves then go on the quest for the Grail itself.
It seemed that, with Temple of Doom, the usualy incontrovertible law of diminishing returns had set into the Indiana Jones series. That, and the fact that Raiders of the Lost Ark set the bar so tremendously high, makes the fact that Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade exceeds both previous films a genuine, deeply pleasent, shock.
The credit for the fact that this is the best of the trilogy goes, almost entirely, to new recruit Sean Connery. Connery was cast as Prof Henry Jones when it was reasoned that only one person could be Indiana Jones' Dad; James Bond. It's a genius piece of casting as Connery doesn't take it seriously for a second, giving a ripe, enormously enjoyable, comic performance. He's also possibly the only actor of his age you could believe having slept with the girl in the movie before his son.
Indiana Jones now fits Harrison Ford like, well, a comfortable old hat and his game is only lifted by having Connery to play off, their exasperation with one another leading to some very funny exchanges.
The girl in Temple of Doom (Kate Capshaw) was a whiny annoyance and the mistake hasn't been repeated here. Alison Doody has perhaps the best part of any of the Indy girls, a layered complex and always believeable character. Her Austrian accent is a caricature but that's fine for this type of movie and she plays the role well. Crucially Doody, before Elsa's allegiance is revealed, creates enough sympathy in the audience that you want her to be redeemed at the end.
The action is non-stop and as good as any that has gone before it in the series. The sequence in the catacombs beneath Venice and the boat chase it leads to are stunning, one running into the other beautifully never letting the pace or the excitement flag. Also outstanding is a lengthy sequence cutting between Indy fighting ON a tank his father is a prisoner IN which eventually brings Henry onto the tank as well, ratcheting up the action a notch.
Along with a great, River Phoenix starring, teaser sequence that reveals how Indy got his fear of snakes, his hat and his bullwhip it adds up to a fantastically enjoyable, thrilling, funny two hours. It even manages to raise a cheer with its last frame.

1935. Indiana Jones (Ford) has ended up in India, the plane on which he was escaping Chinese gangsters having crashed. In order to get local villagers to guide them to Delhi Jones and companions Willie Scott (Capshaw) a lounge singer from the club he met the gangsters in and Short-Round (Quan) a 10 year old boy who has adopted Indy as a surrogate father must retrieve a sacred stone stolen from the villager by the Thugee cult.
Much like The Empire Strikes Back, the middle entry in the original Star Wars trilogy, was 'the dark one' Temple of Doom (original title Indiana Jones and the Temple of Death) is 'the nasty, violent, one' in the Indiana Jones series. It is, interestingly, also producer and story writer George Lucas first foray into prequels (set a year before Raiders).
Temple of Doom, unlike Raiders, struggles with its tone. Once into the thugee temple it often seems relentlessly dark and violent but Spielberg seems unsure of himself, adding comic relief wherever he can find it, particularly through Quan. The tone issues, though, aren't the worst to afflict the film. Biggest of the problems is the sheer amount of time the film takes to get going with the first action beat coming 10 minutes in, after a somewhat successful Busby Berkely style musical number and quite a bit of talk.
There are action beats all the way through but the characters have them happen to them rather than causing them up until, at the 45 minute mark, they enter the main location (a Maharaja's palace, hiding the cult).
From then on Temple of Doom, like it's predecessor, moves from set piece to set piece assuredly and quickly. It peaks early with the brilliant spike room sequence, a masterpiece of pacing from Spielberg which manages to be funny ("We are going to DIE") and thrilling and even to add a genuinely funny slapstick coda that sequence, along with those on a conveyor belt (largely played by Indy double Vic Armstrong while Ford was away having back surgey) and the suspension bridge set climax which still gives this vertigo suffering reviewer the willies stand alonside any of the best sequences of Raiders.
Ford gives essentially the same performance as he had 3 years before and it's still wonderful, iconic even.
Kate Capshaw fares badly, it's hardly her fault, Willie Scott is the anti Marion Ravenwood. Wailing, squealing and screaming her way through the film she's an annoyance. Capshaw's perfectly adept at playing her but that hadly helps when you're longing for a bit of the edge Karen Allen's character had.
Ke Huy Quan is fine as Short-Round, often quite funny and not as annoying as child actors can be (then he does have Capshaw filling those shoes).
Temple of Doom is messy as a film in more ways than one. The violence here is far more explicit than in Raiders (UK prints still have a full minute of cuts, mainly to the sequence where the beating heart is pulled from a man's chest) to the point that, while it controversially got a PG in the US uncut Spielberg was instrumental, through this film, in suggesting that the PG-13 rating be instituted to provide an intermediate between PG and R.
For all its faults Temple of Doom is that rare Spielberg film; an underrated one and really deserves reappraisal from its current reputation as 'the rubbish one' of the series.

With it's never ending rollercoaster of thrills and laughs Raiders of the Lost Ark is often seen as the high watermark for the blockbuster and it's not even the best Indiana Jones film.
Harrison Ford becomes yet another iconic character for George Lucas (who, fortunately, only contributed the story). Ford is so utterly perfect in the role it is impossible to imagine anyone else doing it. The same can be said for Karen Allen, the perfect Indiana Jones girl; as Marion she's sexy, funny, but also resourceful and some use in a tight spot.
The set pieces are unfailingly exciting running the whole length of the film from the brilliant opening with Indy running from a boulder to the deeply scary (well, when I was 8) opening of the ark.
If only more of the films that only aspire to be entertainment today did it even a tenth as well as Raiders.

It's not a promising title really. Robocop succeeds because the intelligence of the film so exceeds that which you expect from the title. Director Paul Verhoven makes a rollicking sci-fi action adventure, one of the best in fact, but what distinguishes it is how Verhoven and screenwriter Ed Neumier stuff the film with social comment and satire. They'd revisit some of these themes in Starship Troopers but their mock news bulletins and adverts work best here.
The film would also have floundered without the sensetive performance of Peter Weller, who actually manages to emote from under the Robocop armour.

The nest superhero film ever made, at least until Spider-Man 3 comes out.

A textbook blockbuster T2 has brains and heart as well as action.

An exploitation classic. Watch it and marvel at the breadth of influence it has had.