Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

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Director: Steven Spielberg

Writers: Lawrence Kasdan, story by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman

Stars: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm Elliott, Alfred Molina, Wolf Kahler, Anthony Higgins



Archaeologist/adventurer Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) joins forces with an old flame (Karen Allen) to race the Nazis for the fabled Ark of the Covenant, which Hitler believes will make his armies invincible. 



Though many films made in the decades since have surpassed it as pure action spectacle, Raiders remains completely entertaining today. 



Ford and Allen present charming, compelling characters in the midst of the chaos, and they are buoyed by a rich supporting cast. 



Director Stephen Spielberg and producer George Lucas spent a lot of energy crafting set pieces that blew minds and raised the bar for action films to come, relying on screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan to connect them with narrative. 



Those set pieces are so good that some creaky plot points can be easily overlooked. 



After all, Indy as a character is completely superfluous here. 



Despite the many scrapes he gets into and out of, he fails to stop the Nazis from acquiring the Ark and is a helpless bystander with his eyes tightly shut when they open it and are destroyed by it. 



In fact, one could argue that everyone would have been better off if Jones had stayed out of it since then the Nazis would have opened it sooner and there would have been less collateral damage. 



But then we wouldn’t have this wonderful film to enjoy.



Spoiler alert!!! The end of the movie!!




































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