Matinee Idyll
New member
After they screened 'Curse of the Jackal' here in Australia, I didn't see any more Young Indy for several years. I'm not sure why, but I was only 6 or 7 when Jackal screened - so I probably wasn't keeping up on things.
Anywho, when I was in Grade 5 I checked the TV guide for a Saturday morning - and there was Young Indiana Jones! I had to play football that morning, but mother taped it for me. I arrived home, and had my head blown by this amazing piece of television...
Now, I hadn't seen The Third Man at this point, and had no noir filmic reference points at this young age - but bloody heck was this nerve-rackin' exciting television! All that exciting stuff on the train, and hell when he's running across the train and those Austrian Secret Policemen are shooting at him through the roof - who said this show had no freakin' action!? A bunch of twonks, that's who.
Really intruiging and suspenseful, Some great comedic moments ("Mmm! These are yummy!") and everything is fabulous, love the lighting during the running street scenes, neat little guest performance from Christopher Lee as the Count, the weight on the Emperors shoulders is really excellently handled.
So much to love - it's all so awesome. And once again, George screws it up by sticking "Russia" after it - the Amazon comments say it all.
This first half of the movie is good and has a lot of suspense. But once they get to Austria and Indy is re-assigned to Russia, the plot falls apart. It gets very confusing, and character development is underdone. There is some guy that is chasing Indy throughout the first half of the movie, and we never know who he really is. And then suddenly Indy is friends with some people in Russia, and we don't know how they came to be friends. It sort of clears up at the end when the Bolsheviks march through the streets of St. Petersburg, but even then, it is still confusing.
The St. Petersberg episode functioned perfectly on its own, because we were joining Indy in the middle of it - and he'd already made friends with Sergei et al - in this new context it's completely random and out of nowhere. We suddenly cut to Indy in Russia, and he's friends with a group of Bolsheviks. Ridiculous George!!!
Anywho, this is about Austria - And how great it is.