If you haven’t seen this movie but plan to please stop reading here.
I believe I would have truly enjoyed this film had I still be 8-12 years old. But I cannot watch a movie based on who I used to be, only on who I am today. I had a really hard time trying to put my logic and all common sense on the back burner in watching this movie. I just couldn’t pull it off. Here are a couple of examples:
Ford survives multiple things that should have easily killed him.
1 – Ford survives a nuclear blast that is capable of melting flesh off someone and toppling a home but yet cannot best a 1950’s refridgerator. Either they just don’t make them like they used to or else Uncle Sam best start using Fridgidaire technology to protect our country.
2 – They survive three successive drops from waterfalls that would have squashed them flatter than a pancake.
3 – Ford stands with his nose 5 feet from an entire mountain that has been mangled into huge boulders and sent flying around and around at at least 150 mph. Wouldn’t anyone who saw that run as far away in the other direction as they could?
There were gaps in the storyline that made the movie ridiculous:
1 – Ford’s friend backstabs him multiple times. Ford is fighting with him in the jeep punching him repeatedly and the next thing you know Ford is taking him to the mountain of gold. No apology. No reconciliation. All of a sudden, magically they are buddies again…and the guy even keeps talking about how he wants that gold on the way to the mountain.
Impossibilities of nature:
1 – How do you have a car chase at 50 mph through virgin Amazon rainforest? The jeeps are running over short palm trees. Have you ever cut down a palm tree that size? I have and I wouldn’t want to run my truck into one, much less several hundred
2 – The gun powder flying to the magnatized crate. Why wouldn’t every light hanging in that place already be pointing to the crate?
3 – Didn’t you think the snake was a hoot, the way it was all rubbery when Ford was pulled from the pit and as the kid flung the 250 lb monster snake into the woods like it was a, I don’t know, 10 lb piece of rubber?
Don’t get me wrong the movie had its moments and was very exciting and had some great fights but the plot was horrible and predictable. In the end you know his friend is going to die from what the villain always dies from – an inner character flaw that they just cannot seem to overcome (his greed is his own undoing). That was the same ending as the Last Crusade and the villains grasping for the cup. I also got a little tired about how they kept up the “old man” mentions. We get it. He is older now. You don’t have to remind me 50 times.
