Wow! Such a good movie.

A Brilliant Conflict

I was totally surprised at how great this film.You could feel your paranoia rise as the film went on and as you gradually learned the details of the real situation.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

Out of work in New York after his romantic disaster, Indiana Jones (Sean Patrick Flanery) finds work with Universal Pictures who send him to Hollywood to put an end to the activities of maniacal Erich von Stroheim (Dana Gladstone), a film director who gone out of control. Later on, he assist Western director John Ford (Stephen Caffrey) in a dangerous adventure that nearly destroys him...The scripts mix fine character comedy with insights on the film business in the twenties. Forget the romance he has with screenwriter Claire (Allison Smith) which is just a repeat of the romance he had with Mata Hari. Much better are his frustrated and eventually doomed efforts to stop von Stroheim. More than that, a tragedy on the set of John Ford's picture forces Indy in front of camera. It's fun watching the adventurer struggle to act in silent films and having to stop a runaway coach.Dana Gladstone is brilliant as the fiendishly ingenious von Stroheim, and there is some good work from Stephen Caffrey as a likable John Ford and Bill Cusack as Hollywood's first mogul Irving Thalberg. Leo Gordon has a nice cameo as an aged Wyatt Earp.So what for the series as a whole - a worthwhile project? I would argue, yes it was. The series maintained high-production values throughout it's entire run and these are evident here on the DVDs. Bar the occasional slip, almost every episode worked on one level or another. Lucasfilm attracted some of the highest calibre actors in the US and UK to do the series and, by and large, they all delivered.The only real problem the series had was the depiction of Indy himself. This is not Sean Patrick Flanery's fault, as the series was originally shot and shown out of chronological order. It would have been very hard under these circumstances to properly develop his character. But I would have loved to have seen some of the canny ruthlessness and grizzled humour that characterised Indy in the movies. As it is, for all his experiences, Young Indy remains straight-laced as a boot. Flanery is always highly watchable in the role, but nevertheless his performance is uninvolving at times. It's still a shame there were never more episodes made to link up the series to the films.I have thoroughly enjoyed watching and reviewing each of these episodes and I would encourage all fans of Indiana Jones to give the DVD series a chance.

I found this movie much better than its IMDb rating would suggest. It was clearly written and made by those who have an appreciation of the history of Hollywood film making. The story with Indiana Jones' involvement is fictional, but deals with two giants of early film, an immigrant from Austria, Erich Von Stroheim, and the prolific John Ford who in the late 1910s and the 1920s made as many as 20 to 25 movies a year, many of them westerns.Sean Patrick Flanery returns as Young Indiana Jones, Archeology student who on a visit to New York (in a prior episode) took control of a bad situation and helped a stage production succeed. This time a movie mogul in New York pays Indy to go to 1922 Hollywood and force director Erich Von Stroheim to finish "Foolish Wives" which had already exceeded $1Million in cost and was nowhere near completion. He was to give him 10 more days. This story is the first half of the movie, and like the real strong-headed Von Stroheim this character is not willing to cooperate.The second half of the movie has Indy working for train money back to school in Chicago, and he becomes an assistant to John Ford in his latest movie. Ford is determined to finish it is 6 days. As they shoot a few things go wrong and they end up with no more stunt men, all lost to injuries. So Indy is pressed into service for an extra $60, and in his stunt to jump from a horse onto horses pulling a wagon, we see a prequel to the famous scene in "Raiders" where he slides under a moving truck to get back in and overcome the Nazis. There is a budding love story with very pretty Allison Smith as writer Claire Lieberman. It is left unresolved because Indy has to travel. Other historical characters include Irving Thalberg, George Gershwin, Harry Carey, and Wyatt Earp. The DVD is even more interesting because of the extras. One is of the life of Von Stroheim and his difficulties with Hollywood bosses. He was generally known as a movie-making genius, but he tended to make 8 or 9 hour movies which had no legitimate market. He eventually moved to France where his genius was more appreciated. The other is of John Ford. Each is about 30 minutes long.

I admit that I only watched this film because it had Erich von Stroheim in it, and didn't even finish watching it, and know nothing about the Indiana Jones series, so maybe I'm missing something here, but so much about this movie was so terrible that it wasn't even funny.It wasn't ALL bad -- actually, the sets and costuming were excellent (the 1920s - such an aesthetically pleasing time period!). And the bits of the actual movie "Foolish Wives" were good, because they had the authentic Erich in them. The most painful parts seemed to occur whenever the main characters had dialogue. Some of the lines exchanged between young Indiana Jones and the heroine made me want to retch. There are some actors whose delivery and skill can make a cheesy piece of dialogue work -- these two do not belong to this group. They were trying to be youthfully cutesy, and the results were not pretty. The heroine says things you'd never expect anyone to say in normal conversation, lines that sound clumsy and forced, especially out of her mouth -- she doesn't seem comfortable in her role.And then there's Erich von Stroheim. True, the guy did seem to be having a lot of fun playing the role -- and the back of his head was identical to Stroheim's (you couldn't really expect much more; Stroheim was unique, no conventional Hollywood pretty-boy, and you'd be hard-pressed to find someone whose looks were remotely similar). Actually, the scenes with Stroheim would have been enjoyable IF he hadn't used that overdone corny fake German accent. Did he do any research at ALL? Did he bother to look at any of the talkies Stroheim was in? Erich von Stroheim was Austrian. Austrian! Austrian!! And there's a huge difference between an Austrian and a blatantly false German accent. It was embarrassing -- I might have been able to enjoy it and root for him if he had been a bit more convincing, but I couldn't get over the way he was mangling Stroheim's delicate growl, with that lilting Austrian twang, into the voice of a hysterical cartoon Nazi.Whew, I needed to get that off my chest.

I have yet to see so many of these films and episodes of the TV Show. I thought I was going to be disappointed when I watched this film. I was wrong. It's not the same Indy as the Spielberg-directed films, but how could it be? Instead, this film was approached in a kind of documentary-style. Keeping in check with the other Indy films, there are, of course, recognisable elements. I particularly enjoyed the fictitious telling of the making of a John Ford film(I forget which one it was, if it was any of them). I don't think Indy is the main character in these films. He's like the missing link to tell us these stories that Mr. Lucas dreamed up. I don't think they explain certain questions that are constantly asked about older Indy, but I don't really care. That would be doing the series injustice. Each Indy adventure is approached with a James Bond-ish...approach. None of the adventures continue into the next one. I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Now, if it was Star Wars, well...