Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny Review: Enjoyable Adventure But Not Quite The Rousing Finale Indy Deserved
Indy's last adventure, sigh!
3 / 5
Before we begin, we all agree that Raiders Of The Lost Ark is the best Indiana Jones movie, yes? Excellent. You have chosen wisely. It would also seem a wise choice to make a fifth and final film, 15 years after Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, to give this franchise, and its archaeology professor / “grave robber”, a poignant closure. Director James Mangold, who gave us Logan and Ford vs Ferrari, does evoke Raiders with this film’s structure, while also incorporating themes of ageing and despondence in the twilight of Indy’s hero’s journey. And Harrison Ford doesn’t miss a beat in his swansong for this beloved character that has been around for 42 years.
Despite early reviews (Cannes), The Dial Of Destiny is a decent swashbuckling, entertaining, and full-of-fan-service nostalgia fest. However, it does drop the ball in certain aspects and that impedes it from being a truly great send-off to this beloved character, particularly with the way it chooses to end. The film also stars Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, Ethann Isidore, and Mads Mikkelsen. Returning characters from the franchise include John Rhys-Davies as Sallah and Karen Allen as Marion Ravenwood.
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I love how the film begins, a classic Indiana Jones skirmish with the Nazis in 1944, both in pursuit of some long-lost historic artefact that might just have supernatural powers. This means watching a de-aged Harrison Ford, which I’d like to say is a job well done, even if it gets a bit awkward in some frames. The train sequence reeled me in completely, and it felt as if we never left Indy’s world.
The stark shift to the present right after, set in 1969 when America put men on the moon, puts in focus just how much the world had changed. And how much men like Indy, who once worked to fill up museums with history, are now history and belong in museums. He is estranged from Marion, and we also find out what’s up with this son, played by Shia LaBeouf in Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull.
The arrival of Helena Shaw, the daughter of an old friend, jolts the grumpy professor back into his old life, and the adventure begins. There’s not one but two MacGuffins: one that leads to the other. And this time, it’s the life of Greek mathematician Archimedes that’s being followed up to his Antikythera mechanism that the good and bad guys want to scream Eureka for. What does it do? Ooh, something interesting that I wouldn’t want to spoil for ya! But rest assured, it is high stakes and the history lesson is interesting to send you reading up on the Internet post-movie.
The action, the banter between the characters, the callbacks to the older movies in the franchise, and the earnest performances by Mads Mikkelsen and Harrison Ford make The Dial Of Destiny a mostly enjoyable ride. Director James Mangold manages to distill the essence of the Indiana Jones movies in this one too, helped copiously my Harrison Ford playing the character just as we remembered him, but with the weight of the years that have passed by. I’ll admit, there are lulls in between when the adventure slows down, but overall, this is an Indian Jones film through and through, with callbacks that are bound to make you nostalgic. Every time the music by John Williams plays, it gets that euphoric rise out of you!
And yet, it doesn’t quite feel like the grand sendoff that Indy deserves, even if it feels like a realistic one, despite that unreal plot twist we don’t see coming in the third act. We see Sallah ask Indy to give them hell, but it still seems too tame, even emotionally, an adventure for this character’s last ride. I kept thinking of Mangold’s Logan, and while I know this franchise’s style isn’t about leaving fans in a blubbering mess, I still hoped that Dial Of Destiny explored a little more in detail the psyche of this grumpy, old Indiana Jones, his relationship with Marion, and why he wants to do what he wants to do in the film’s climax.
And then there’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Helena, for whom I felt absolutely nothing. It’s not like she and Ford don’t have chemistry; only it’s vanilla. It’s not making you wish this weren’t the end of their adventures together. Instead, it made me wonder, are we to see her as a successor to Indy’s legacy? Or would it have worked if some other actor had been in those shoes?
The Dial Of Destiny tends to waste a couple of actors’ casting, like Antonio Banderas as one of Indiana’s old friends who steps in to help for a brief time and is given an unceremonious exit. For anyone who has seen The Sandman on Netflix, Boyd Holbrook as the Corinthian puts forth a deliciously wicked act. Yet in this film, his character Klaber is reduced to a trigger-happy henchman for the big bad guy, and not given much to do. I kept waiting for his role to escalate, but it didn’t amount to much.
The only other character then, apart from Indiana Jones, that grabs your attention is Mads Mikkelsen’s Jürgen Voller, thankfully not your usual Nazi with a thick German accent, but a clever adversary who knows how to keep his cool, bide his time, and play the game.
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Verdict
Hey, this is still a better closure than Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull, okay? I am not complaining. I just wish the goodbye was a bit more of a rousing chorus, booming like when Sallah sings A British Tar, ya know?
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny fits perfectly into the Indiana Jones franchise and is enjoyable and entertaining for the most part. But you’ve also to look at it as the last hurrah of a beloved swashbuckling character, and in those expectations, it tends to lack that rousing emotional grand final adventure feel. Luckily, fans of the franchise and Harrison Ford won’t be let down because our hero’s still got it. Give it a go, for old time’s sake and to get some closure.
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny is currently in theatres.
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