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Reviews Counted: 47
Fresh: 44
Rotten:3
Average Rating: 8.8/10
Consensus: Featuring bravura set pieces, sly humor, and white-knuckle action, Raiders of the Lost Ark is one of the most consummately entertaining adventure pictures of all time.
Theatrical Release: Jun 12, 1981 Wide
Synopsis: Action-packed and adventure-filled, RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK is director Steven Spielberg's loving homage to the Saturday matinee cliffhanger serials of his childhood. When the Allies discover the Nazis are planning to use the Lost Ark... [More]
Starring: Harrison Ford, Karen Allen, Paul Freeman, Ronald Lacey
Director: Steven Spielberg
The thrills are fully consumed while you’re seeing this movie, and it’s totally over when it’s over. It’s a workout. You feel as if you’d been to the desert digs: at the end your mind is blank, yet you’re parched, you’re puffing hard -- you want relief.
Top Critic
Justifiably one of the most indelible adventure films in cinematic history...
It's the perfect vacation-time movie: not a serious moment in its whole two hours but so crammed with laughter, thrills and cinematic sleight of hand that audiences will be sorry when it's over.
Lost Ark holds up for many reasons, not least of which is because of Spielberg's consummate skill as a visual storyteller and his ability to draw charged performances from his actors.
The postmodern heir to North By Northwest...Like any deathless classic, Raiders is a perfect marriage of star and material.
...despite the fast pace, the movie is never frenetic or tiring, just pure, unadulterated fun throughout.
...lets us indulge in childish thrills without feeling silly about it.
Vastly entertaining, Spielberg's adventure herladed a new breed of Hollywood blockbuster (and event film), a tale that combines classic Hollywood story-telling, playful postmodern sensibility and spectacular stunts presented in rapid-fire pacing.
...a crackerjack fantasy-adventure that shapes its pulp sensibilities and cliff-hanging serial origins into an exhilarating escapist entertainment that will have broad-cased summer audiences in the palm of its hand.
Top Critic One would think that a collaboration between Steven Spielberg and George Lucas would produce something better than this giggly pastiche of a Republic serial...
Top Critic New Hollywood moguls Spielberg and Lucas teamed up to create the first -- and best -- of their extremely popular plunderings of old adventure serials ... In retrospect, it also appears as a precise pop-culture inauguration of Reagan-era retro Americanism.
Whether you swallow it or not, see it for a handful of totally unexpected visual jokes, worth the price of admission alone.
Classic action set pieces, Harrison Ford at his swashbuckling best, Old Testament spirituality, and a satiric jab at Nazi anti-Semitism.
This is the kind of movie that, even today, audiences immediately fall in love with. It has all the right ingredients: a smart script, a likable hero, a dash of romance, more than a touch of comedy, and a lot of fast-paced action.
Top Critic Throughout the film, Spielberg evokes the kind of armchair-clutching action sequences that remind us why they're called motion pictures.
You'd have to be a heathen to argue with the fact that Raiders of the Lost Ark stands as the best action-adventure movie ever made.
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