I saw this film when it was first released in 1984, nearly 40 years later I attended a revival showing of this film and I can say, I still don't like it. Everything about the film with the exception of the photography and John Williams score just does not work. Spielberg was always the master at where to put the camera and when to edit a scene for maximum impact and that really didn't fail him here, but the story and screenplay are just terrible.
Producer George Lucas along with his longtime collaborators Willard Huyck and Gloria Katz apparently had no idea how to construct a decent story with entertaining thrills and some interesting characters. The film was apparently strung together from a bunch of leftover action scenes that didn't make it into Raiders Of The Lost Ark. After the fun and lighthearted approach to the first film in the Indiana Jones series Lucas decided he wanted to go darker. The result were a lot of scenes which were extremely violent and gross more so than the first film. And this was supposedly a family film.
The characters were nothing to write home about as well. Harrison Ford does what he can to prop the film up but Kate Capshaw who is the female lead in this film is pretty terrible, no fault of the actor. The script really let her down. The film also has a cute little oriental kid nick named "Short Round" a character who originally showed up in Sam Fuller's The Steel Helmet. The film spends a lot of time on his foolishness as Indiana Jone's sidekick.
If anyone comes out on top it's the veteran British cinematographer Douglas Slocombe. Slocombe was one of Spielberg's most important collaborators for a while and in fact he is next to Spielberg in about every shot in the making of feature found on YouTube. This is a good looking film
The film was commercially successful but as a piece of commercial entertainment, a complete failure.
The running time is 118 minutes.
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