Steven Spielberg directs Harrison Ford, Shia LeBeouf and Karen Allen in this 50s set revival of cinema’s most beloved adventurer.

Admittedly flawed but not the travesty it sometimes is painted as being. Indy 4 is a stew of classic ingredients and modern twists where some of the new elements sadly spoil the flavour. Ray Winstone, John Hurt and Cate Blanchett for example are extremely hammy which isn’t the end of the world but LeBeouf is dreadful (out of his depth in the charisma stakes and bugging away in the background of shots like some kind of method acting glitch)… the movie only really zings when Indiana is left to his own devices or Ford gets to reignite the spark with Allen’s fine return as Marion Ravenwood. Their chemistry seems to reset the whole endeavour back to a watchable setting once reunited. Action wise is a similar mixed bag; I actually enjoy the fridge / nuke escape and surrounding sequence, there’s some darkly decent Pygmy dart fighting and once we are all together and on course to the lost city of Akator everything except some CGI vine swinging and a glaring alien close up feels like Spielberg is pretty much back on form. Pluses and minuses tallied up, without fanboy high expectations, and it passes… Just. Not so much a cash-in on a bonafide classic but a uncertain attempt at reverse engineering what used to work with inappropriate tools. Edit out a fake gopher here, the use of movie stills for family photos on a desk there, a shot or twelve of Mutt everywhere and this would be a decent placeholder for the legacy of blockbuster cinema’s finest franchises. And when it comes to solving cobwebby riddles, being overawed by mushroom clouds and spacecrafts tearing out of ruins or just popping his trademark Fedora on, Ford still has IT in spades.

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