s something of an Indiana Jones' Greatest Hits, recycling sequences from the '80s trilogy, re-using globe-trotting, angry natives, high-speed vehicle chases, killer red ants, double-crosses and an artifact that will give its owner unspeakable power – and snakes! Oh, and Ford muttering "I've got a bad feeling about this" one more time.

While there's no question that this Indy production is first-rate, the skill honed and professional and the principals are indeed having a ball. The film begins with an in-joke reference to George Lucas's teen classic American Graffiti. A rumpled Jones - like the audience, he, too, is 19 years older - captured and forced to help Soviet bad guys find the location of a certain box in the endless warehouse we saw at the end of Raiders.

By the end, Crystal Skull has taken on entirely new dimensions, literally.

Indy and sidekick Mac (Ray Winstone) have been kidnapped by a Soviet military regiment disguised as US soldiers, and transported via car trunk to a nuclear facility in the New Mexico desert in order to assist in divulging top secrets. Supervising the Soviet infiltrators is sword-wielding Stalinist Irina Spalko (Cate Blanchett).

Indiana escapes (long story) and takes off for a new back-to-nature excellent adventure in search of the mythic omnipotent Crystal Skull - he is needed to help track down a crate in Area 51. One harrowing escape follows another as one of Indiana’s colleagues, Professor Oxley (John Hurt), has set out to find it and disappeared.

A young man named Mutt (Shia LeBeouf) arrives to beg Indy to help find the Crystal Skull and return it to the lost city of Alkator, an El Dorado in the middle of the Amazon. Along the way they run into Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen reprising her role from the original film), who has lost none of her spunk.