Last updated 13:49, Thursday, 22 May 2008

IT’S BEEN almost 20 years since Harrison Ford last flexed his trusty bullwhip but he’s in remarkably good shape for his pensionable years, performing many of his own stunts.

INDIANA JONES AND THE KINGDOM OF THE CRYSTAL SKULL (12A, 122 mins) Action/Drama/Comedy/Romance. Harrison Ford, Shia LaBeouf, Cate Blanchett, Ray Winstone, Karen Allen, John Hurt, Jim Broadbent. Director: Steven Spielberg.

During action sequences, when director Steven Spielberg is on a sure footing, this fourth film in the blockbusting series is an absolute joy, delivering adrenaline-pumping thrills and spills interspersed with smart one-liners.

It’s a glorious nostalgia trip, returning to the good ole days when the hero actually bleeds during a fistfight or he leaps from one moving vehicle to another without the aid of hidden wires and digital trickery.

Unfortunately, the hocus pocus storyline holding all these breathtaking set pieces together is gossamer thin.

The narrative begins at an airfield in 1957 Nevada where our fedora-clad adventurer and pal Mac (Winstone) first encounter villainous Soviet agent Irina Spalko (Blanchett) and her gun-toting goons.

Indy whip-cracks and wisecracks his way out of trouble and returns to Marshall College where Dean Stanforth (Broadbent) asks the professor to take “an indefinite leave of absence”.

A chance encounter at the railway station with rebellious greaser Mutt (LaBeouf), an acquaintance of Indy’s old pal Professor Oxley (Hurt), sets the archaeologist on a quest to locate the legendary Crystal Skull of Akator.

Alas, Irina and her henchmen also seek the artefact, and they intend to use Indy to locate it – by threatening to kill old flame Marion Ravenwood (Allen) if he doesn’t help him.

There are visual and verbal cues to earlier films, with affectionate nods to Sean Connery and Denholm Elliott and a tantalising glimpse of the Ark of the Covenant, plus a welcome return for Marion.

She generates delicious sexual tension with Ford’s grouchy adventurer and you end up wishing her character could have been introduced much earlier to perk up a dull, plot-driven middle section.

Blanchett is underserved, which is a pity because she has great fun with the role and an almost comical accent.

LaBeouf screeches into shot on a motorcycle with the look of a young Marlon Brando in The Wild One, but he doesn’t have the same macho swagger.

His character only really comes to the fore during a breathtaking jungle sequence by engaging Irina in a sword fight while standing astride two fast moving jeeps, then swinging through the trees like Tarzan.

If there were any lingering doubts that Mutt is being lined up to accept the mantle of Indy’s fedora in subsequent films, the sentimental ending makes it explicit.

DAMON SMITH