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| Harrison
Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, John Rhys-Davies, Denholm
Elliott |
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Anamorphic
widescreen |
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Dolby Digital
5.1 |
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DTS |
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Trailer(s) |
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Featurette(s) |
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Documentary |
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Audio commentary
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Deleted scenes
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Concept art
/ storyboards |
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Multi-angle
feature |
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Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford): Meet
me at Omar's. Be ready for me. I'm going after that truck.
Sallah (John Rhys-Davies): How?
Indiana Jones: I don't know, I'm making this up as I go.
Archeologist and adventurer Indiana
Jones is hired by the US government to find the Ark of the Covenant
before the Nazis beat him to it.
 When
the world's two most commercially successful filmmakers joined
forces in 1981 to deliver an action adventure movie offering a
sensational thrill-ride composed of one action set-piece after
another, the resulting film unsurprisingly redefined the genre.
Indeed, there are very few contemporary action or adventure films
that aren't heavily indebted to this Spielberg/Lucas collaboration
in one way or another. Marrying George Lucas's uncanny comic book
sensibility with Steven Spielberg's technical expertise as a filmmaker, Raiders
of the Lost Ark put an exciting contemporary spin on the most
old-fashioned of adventure stories.
Still easily the best of the 'trilogy', Raiders achieves
a near-perfect balance between its high-octane action sequences
and narrative shoe leather that's written and performed well enough
to offer the opportunity to catch one's breath without slowing
down the film's lightning pace. The only real disappointment is
the visual effects-heavy finale, where Spielberg overindulges his
fondness for biblical epics by relegating his heroes to the sidelines
as the Wrath of God brings an impressively staged but dramatically
unsatisfying end to the hero's quest. Apart from this misjudgment,
it's hard indeed to find a film in this genre so charmingly successful
at delivering what it promises to, and the Citizen Kane-inspired sight
gag that closes the film nearly makes up for the botched climax.
On a final note of reassurance to anxious fans fearing changes
to the original film by the notoriously restless Spielberg/Lucas
partnership, I am happy to say that hardly any digital 'enhancement'
has been applied to the original film, in spite of the film's title
being changed to the laughable Indiana Jones and the Raiders
of the Lost Ark (on the packaging only: the opening credits
title remains unchanged). The only instance of meddling
is the cobra's reflection in a pane of plexiglass, which has been
digitally erased from the frame. So fans can rest assured: when
faced with the sword-wielding assassin, Indy still shoots first... |
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Released for Region 1 and 2
in identical four-disc box sets that include all three Indiana
Jones films and a fourth disc of extras.
The anamorphic widescreen
image is framed at an aspect ratio of approx. 2.35:1. Like
the other two Indiana Jones movies, Raiders has
been restored and digitally cleaned up by industry standard-bearer
Lowry Digital Images, with simply incredible results. Colors
are very strong, with reds that leap right off the screen,
and a full, deep contrast. A few shots have a slight softness
to them that seems at odds with the crisp restoration effort,
and there are also a few cases where the reds seem overripe
and a little artificial (most notably during the first scene
between Indy and Marion in Tibet). But these few minor defects
hardly detract from the overall high standard of this otherwise
impeccable restoration effort.
The Dolby
Digital 5.1 sound mix offers a full redesign of the
film's soundscape that will give any surround sound setup
a solid workout. John Williams' famous score is spread across
the width and depth of the soundstage with impressively
high fidelity, while action sequences are marked by numerous
directional effects that may not quite measure up to contemporary
action movie standards, but that nicely enhance the film
experience.
See our separate
review of disc four, which contains all the extras
in this box set. The
elaborately animated menu screens were clearly meant to reproduce
the design of Drew Struzan's poster art, but really just give you
a headache with their fuzzily rendered scene outlines.
Noah
Eamon
Reviewed:
October 27, 2003
Click
here for IMDB info on Raiders
of the Lost Ark.
Click here
to return to the front page.
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