1981 action/adventure film that introduced the now-famous character of Indiana Jones to the world. The film starred Harrison Ford in one of his most memorable roles. He would go on to play Indiana Jones again in the film's two sequels: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989). Doctor Henry "Indiana" Jones is an expert archeologist but also an adventurer, not content simply digging up artifacts from times past but obtaining particularly hard-to-get ones. At the beginning of the movie we see Indiana in South America braving the traps of an ancient temple to obtain an equally ancient (and valuable) idol of the culture that built the temple (and made sure to fill it with nasty traps and a giant boulder). Unfortunately for Indy, after nearly escaping from the temple with his life (and the idol), he finds himself surrounded by the area's tribesmen and a rival archeologist/mercenary, Rene Belloq (Paul Freeman). It becomes apparent that the two have a history of rivalry with Jones being the good guy who gives the treasures he collects to museums and Belloq the bad guy who sells the priceless artifacts to the highest bidder and obtains them through nefarious means (such as convincing the local tribe to help him take the idol from Jones).
This sets up a nemesis for Indiana Jones as well as show the audience enough about him to get an idea of who he is and what he does, which brings us to the next part of the film: Dr. Jones is lecturing a class about archeology when a collegue of his, Dr. Marcus Brody (Denholm Elliott), informs him of some information about the Ark of the Covenant, which the US government then hires Jones to find before the Nazis, who have been scouring the world for occult-type objects (they're still at it in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, looking for the Holy Grail), do. Indiana sets off for Nepal to obtain an artifact that would aid in his search for the ark from a previous associate, only to find he's died and his daughter, Marion Ravenwood (a previous romantic interest of Indiana's played by Karen Allen), has the piece he seeks. A Nazi and his henchmen show up, doing bad things, and putting Marion and Indiana in a situation in which they become partners rather than Indy just paying Marion for the part. Then it's off to Cairo, Egypt to find the ark and more adventure....
With most of the main characters introduced, the movie continues with much action, adventure, etc. and is pretty entertaining. Raiders of the Lost Ark (and its sequels) showed audiences a lot of the cliches found in following years in similar movies. The film still seems to be the best execution of them though, with direction by Steven Spielberg and a story written by George Lucas and Philip Kaufman. The music for the movie was composed by John Williams and is, at times, extremely good and very memorable. The whole score is pretty good but at times it sounds, much like some of Williams' other work, a bit too much like something out of Star Wars (for which he composed the score).
Personally, I think the movie is pretty entertaining and definitely one of the better action movies around. It doesn't suffer from what many action flicks do (bad acting, incoherent or lame plot, dependence on solely visual effects to entertain, etc.). The film won Academy Awards in the categories of film editing, sound, art direction/set decoration, sound effects editing, and visual effects. In addition, it was also nominated (but didn't win) in the categories of director, cinematography, original score, and best picture. It also won an award for best art direction from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA). Raiders of the Lost Ark can frequently be found occupying some relatively high spot on the Internet Movie Database's list of top 250 movies of all time (as of the time of this writing, it is rated as number fifteen).
Running time: 115 minutes.
MPAA/BBFC rating: PG
Award information obtained from http://www.ifilm.com/ifilm/product/film_info/0,3699,2325723,00.html.