Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (Steven Spielberg, 1989) is set in 1938. Walter Donovan is a wealthy American businessman and collector of antiquities, a patron of the museum where Marcus Brody works. He shows Indiana a stone tablet that points to the location of the Holy Grail and tells him that the head of his project, Professor Henry Jones—Indiana’s father—has disappeared. Indiana sets off to find him and discovers that Donovan is working with the Nazis and with the Austrian art historian Elsa Schneider; he had used Indiana to recover the Grail diary his father kept. At the hidden temple in the Canyon of the Crescent Moon, the Nazi expedition is stuck: the Grail is protected by three deadly trials. Donovan solves the problem by shooting Henry Jones Sr. in the stomach, so that his son has to pass the trials and bring back the Grail, the only thing that can heal the wound. In the chamber beyond, among dozens of cups, Donovan lets Elsa choose for him. She hands him a gold, jewelled chalice. He drinks, ages in seconds and crumbles to dust. The ancient knight who guards the Grail sums it up: “He chose... poorly”.
// The theoryConscience as a cost
Early rational choice models of crime counted only external costs: the probability and severity of punishment. In the 1990s, criminologists such as Raymond Paternoster and Sally Simpson showed that this was incomplete. In their studies of corporate crime, managers asked whether they would commit offenses such as price-fixing or environmental violations weighed the gains and the legal risk, but also moral costs: whether the act was wrong, whether they would feel ashamed, how it fitted their idea of themselves. For many of them, the moral judgment was decisive on its own; legal threats mattered mainly for those with weak moral inhibitions. Similar findings appeared in research on other offenses. The model has an obvious corollary: moral cost is not a fixed wall but a weight, and like any weight in a calculation, it can be outweighed. The larger the perceived prize, the more conscience has to resist.
An infinite reward
What makes Donovan an extreme case is the size of the prize. Most crimes offer a finite gain: money, power, revenge. The Grail offers eternal life. In the logic of moral cost-benefit, an infinite reward makes any finite cost look small, including the life of an old man, collaboration with a regime of murderers and the betrayal of people who trusted him. Donovan’s behavior fits that reading. He shows no anger towards the Joneses; he shoots Henry Sr. with businesslike calm and explains the logic out loud: only the Grail can save him, so Indiana must fetch it. The shot is not an outburst. It is an incentive designed to make someone else take the risk of the trials. Donovan pays the moral cost without seeming to feel it, because the sum, for him, has already come out.
// The subjectA gentleman with the right friends
Donovan is not a soldier or a fanatic. He is a respectable American, rich, well connected, at ease in museums and drawing rooms. His collaboration with the Nazis is not ideological; it is a partnership of convenience with the only power able to fund and protect the search. That respectability is part of the crime: it lets him approach Indiana and Brody as a friend and patron, and it keeps anyone from asking questions. He also delegates. Others do the digging, the shooting and the risking; he appears when there is something to collect. His death is the film’s moral verdict on him: faced with the true Grail, a simple carpenter’s cup, he lets someone else choose and drinks from the most ostentatious one. The vanity that measured everything by value made him unable to recognize what he was looking for.
Walter Donovan
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// The crackNot everything that matters is a cost
Treating conscience as a cost to be weighed is useful for research and uncomfortable as a description of moral life. For most people, shooting a defenceless old man is not an expensive option; it is not an option at all. Philosophers call these limits side constraints, and the moral cost model struggles to represent them except as very high prices. The theory also takes Donovan’s valuation of the prize for granted. Why does a man who already has everything want to live forever at any price? That desire belongs to other explanations: narcissism, fear of death, the conviction that his life is worth more than others’.
There is also the question of his partners. Donovan’s calculation is possible because the Nazis provide the weapons, the men and the protection, and because people like Elsa share his willingness to pay any price. Donovan chose to shoot Henry Jones and to serve a regime he knew was dangerous. What the moral cost-benefit model contributes is a warning about how conscience fails: rarely by disappearing, more often by being outweighed by a reward someone has decided is worth everything.
Respectable people and big prizes
Research on white-collar and corporate crime keeps finding offenders who look like Donovan: educated, prosperous and well regarded, who cross lines when the gains are very large and the moral cost can be diluted, delegated or rationalized. Paternoster and Simpson’s finding has a practical side: strengthening moral judgments inside organizations—ethics that are taken seriously, leaders who model them, colleagues who object—prevents more crime than threats alone. The Last Crusade turns the lesson into a fable. The man who thought conscience had a price paid it with his life, at the moment he believed he had won.
Three key ideas
- Rational choice models with moral cost (Paternoster and Simpson, 1996) show that guilt, shame and self-image weigh in the decision to offend, often more than legal threats. But moral cost is a weight, and a large enough prize can outweigh it.
- Walter Donovan, a rich collector, works with the Nazis to find the Grail, shoots Henry Jones Sr. so that Indiana must pass the trials to save him, and dies after drinking from the false cup that Elsa chose for him: “He chose... poorly”.
- The crack: for most people some acts are not expensive options but impossible ones, and the model takes Donovan’s valuation of eternal life for granted. Even so, the shot was his choice.
Sources · further reading
- Paternoster, R. and Simpson, S. (1996). “Sanction Threats and Appeals to Morality: Testing a Rational Choice Model of Corporate Crime”. Law & Society Review, 30(3), 549-583.
- Bachman, R., Paternoster, R. and Ward, S. (1992). “The Rationality of Sexual Offending: Testing a Deterrence/Rational Choice Conception of Sexual Assault”. Law & Society Review, 26(2), 343-372.
- Cornish, D. B. and Clarke, R. V. (eds.) (1986). The Reasoning Criminal: Rational Choice Perspectives on Offending. Springer-Verlag.
- Spielberg, S. (dir.) (1989). Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. Paramount Pictures / Lucasfilm.
Case-file questionsFrequently asked questions
Who is Walter Donovan?
Walter Donovan is a villain from Indiana Jones, analysed on KRIMINIS through the lens of criminology. He shot an unarmed old man in front of his son and then explained, with perfect calm, that only the Grail could save him.
Why does Walter Donovan become a villain?
Walter Donovan and moral cost-benefit: in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, a respectable millionaire funds the Nazis and shoots Henry Jones Sr. to force his son through the trials of the Grail. Criminology knows that conscience also weighs in the calculation of crime. Donovan found a prize that made it look cheap.
Which criminological theory explains Walter Donovan?
Walter Donovan's case is analysed through Moral cost-benefit. The rational choice models that study moral cost (Paternoster and Simpson, among others) hold that people do not calculate only money and punishment: guilt, shame and self-image also weigh. For most people, that cost is enough to prevent offending. Walter Donovan, tycoon and collector in The Last Crusade (1989), is the man for whom the prize is so great—eternal life—that any moral cost looks negligible. His case shows what happens to conscience when someone convinces himself that the reward is infinite.
