Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Bombs drop and walls crumble; the Second World War is approaching its end with the liberation of Europe underway and the Third Reich in full retreat, scrambling to gather what valuables they can; in their midst is Henry Walton “Indiana” Jones, seeking the mystical Lance of Longinus, his disguise as a Nazi officer somewhat ironic as it is on record that “he hates these guys.”
With high explosives and the crazy dumb luck which has always been a part of keeping up with the Joneses, he escapes and is reunited with his friend and fellow antiquarian expert Basil Shaw, escaping not with the mythical spear of the crucifixion, found to be a fake, but something else: a fragment of “Archimedes’ Dial,” the Antikythera, an object which twenty-five years later remains concealed in a university store room in New York.
Forty-one years after his debut in Raiders of the Lost Ark and fifteen years after his last adventure to the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Harrison Ford has returned to the other iconic role with which he is synonymous in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, directed with enthusiasm by Logan’s James Mangold from a script by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and Mangold himself which plays to the strengths of the franchise and understands the character and his enduring charm.
From New York to Morocco to Sicily via an expedition to the eel-infested bottom of the Aegean Sea in search of ancient sunken treasure, travels accompanied by both Jones’ godchild Helena Shaw (Solo’s Phoebe Waller-Bridge) and the requisite red line tracking across the map, like the previous sequels Dial of Destiny discards any unnecessary baggage in favour of the new story, though as an archaeologist there will always be ties to the past.
Ford playing to his established “grumpy old man” reputation as he begins his unexpected magical mystery tour even as he is preparing to face the unappealing transition to retirement, pushed out just as the space age heralds the arrival of a new future, Helena is much like her godfather, intelligent, impulsive and addicted to escapades, both of them masters of improvisation in a crisis and leaving behind a trail of aggrieved associates seeking recompense among the few loyal friends.
For Helena there is wily street kid Teddy (Ethann Isidore), while for Indy there is Renaldo (Automata’s Antonio Banderas) and his old friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies, missing the desert and the sea but apparently having forsaken his accent without any regrets), while hot on their collective tail is Jürgen Voller (Rogue One‘s Mads Mikkelsen), an obsessed Nazi fundamentalist who has reinvented himself as a NASA scientist and his henchman Klaber (Eight for Silver’s Boyd Holbrook) whose smile means he is enjoying inflicting pain.
The visual effects a step up from the disappointment of Crystal Skull, some dodgy train-hopping aside, while Mikkelsen’s digital de-aging for the prelude is somewhat waxy Ford’s rejuvenation is for the most part successful, while some of the chase sequences are inevitably mediated via green screen – with the leading man about to celebrate his eighty-first birthday prudence is preferable to unnecessary endangerment of the elderly – there is also a great deal of the practical work which was the hallmark of the original Indiana Jones films which were shaped in homage to the serials of the thirties where there was no other option but to create action and stunts in-camera.
The original trilogy having involved artifacts tied with mythology before Crystal Skull took a misstep into a poorly conceived and executed science fiction scenario, while Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny also falls in that broad domain it is neither so egregious nor clumsy, merely a doorway beyond which lies the final part of Indiana Jones’ story, in keeping with the character, his expertise and his beliefs and also concluding his journey with a reminder of the most important parts of his past, a fitting final chapter which offers emotion, thrills and closure while also overselling archaeology as a career which is exciting and fun.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is currently on general release and also screening in IMAX
