I don’t really have any vacation plans this year, and financial circumstances make that harder anyway. But I do have a lot of vacation time saved up, so why not take an extra day off to see the latest Indiana Jones adventure? I wasn’t honestly expecting much between Harrison Ford’s age and Steven Spielberg’s absence. James Mangold is a fine director in his own right, but is it even possible to recapture the magic of the original, loosely-connected trilogy this many years later? Especially given the disaster that was Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?
I wasn’t quite ready to write the movie off, but I can say that sometimes a years-later sequel can work out much better than expected.
An extended opening flashback to the end of World War II opens up the plot: while working to rescue stolen antiquities from the Nazis, Indiana Jones (Ford) and his British colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) match wits with a number of Nazis, including one Dr.Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), find themselves with half of Archimedes’s Dial, an ancient artifact of unknown purpose, reportedly broken into two pieces by Archimedes himself due to how dangerous the device allegedly is. Voller and eventually Shaw both come to believe the device has some time travel capabilities, but Indy is less certain and just believes it belongs in a museum.
Fast forward to 1969 and a now elderly Dr. Jones is living alone in an apartment, unable to incite passion in his students, and missing his wife Marion. However, he’s not done with Archimedes’s Dial just yet as Basil’s daughter–and Indy’s goddaughter–Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) shows up looking for information on the Dial, and Voller, having apparently been removed from Germany under Operation Paperclip, is likewise still looking for it. Their dueling presence pulls a very reluctant Indy into another globetrotting adventure, one where he’ll need to call in a favor or two and hope Helena is a better person than she seems to be when she first re-enters his life. Whether the Dial works as Basil and Voller both believe may not matter. There are people who would kill to get their hands on the artifact, and Indy might just be the next victim.
So, is this as good as the classic Indiana Jones movies? No, but I didn’t expect it to be. Recapturing the magic was never going to be a thing that could happen, so the best I could hope for is at least a serviceable adventure with an elderly Dr. Jones. Tom Cruise proved in Tom Gun: Maverick that it is very possible to make a fun movie with a returning character where said character could both be older, more mature, and recognizably himself. The Indy in most of this movie is an old man suffering from a lot of loss after a lifetime of adventure. I don’t expect Ford to be able to move around as well now as he did when he was half of his current age, and likewise, there’s no way Mangold was going to put together action sequences that are on par with what Spielberg did back in the 80s. But that’s Spielberg. He was never going to be that good. But can he be good enough in his own way?
I actually think he did. Helena comes across as a less reputable, more callous Indy when she shows up, an archaeologist who never got past the “fortune and glory” phase while leaving behind a spurned love in another country, adopting a kid sidekick (Ethann Isidore), and having a father obsessed with a legendary artifact with supposedly mystical powers. Voller is a good villain, and his main sidekick Klaber (Boyd Holbrook) is that kind of nasty piece of crap that an audience will probably root to die. While Dial of Destiny is not on the same level as the original movie, it does stand out well in its own right, and I was entertained during the runtime, spotty de-aging that entered the Uncanny Valley here and there aside. Will it please the hardcore fans? Probably not, but as a final Indy installment, at least it’s miles better than Crystal Skull.
Grade: B-
0 Comments