July 3, 2023 · Watch the trailer
Nostalgia in cinema is quite a magnificent thing when it works properly.
In recent years, movie studios have delved backed into franchises to create new, modern, takes on existing IP with aging actors to great effect most notably with the resurgence of “Top Gun: Maverick” and the pinnacle of Daniel Craig’s turn as James Bond in “No Time To Die.”
This past weekend, a now 80-year-old Harrison Ford returns to the big screen for his fifth appearance as Indiana Jones in the first film, not to be directed by Steven Spielberg, common James Mangold’s “Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny,” a more proper sendoff for the iconic archaeologist/grave digger/hero of history.
It’s a wildly, more satisfying turn than “Indiana Jones And The Kingdom Of The Crystal Skull,” a much-maligned, an interesting, bombastic way to set up a future franchise that did not work and mangled and his team do a terrific job re-centering the audience away from “Crystal Skull” with a more heartfelt, entertaining, engaging end to the franchise.
At two-and-a-half hours, this film is significantly longer than much of its better predecessors, although audiences do see Indiana towards retirement age, still squaring off against remaining members of the Nazi Party to protect the world from domination by the Third Reich using a dial with immense power designed by Archimedes.
Ford is once again terrific at the heart of this film with the titular character, Indiana Jones, bringing both swagger and gravitas to an unlikely hero who’s part Robert Langdon, part James Bond.
The accelerated age doesn’t really slow Ford down from still being a premier action movie star. His action sequences, while within the character of an aging Jones, still have a modern yet plausible everyman hero character aesthetic to Indy and Ford tremendously balances the line between his almost superhero-esque talent and the weather that years of high-level treasure hunting tolls on a man’s body.
“Dial Of Destiny” attempt to balance the scales thematically with the introduction of Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Helena, who has some fun repartee opposite Ford and the duo seek to find the dial before Nazis can take it to change the course of humanity.
While Waller-Bridge does have a witty cadence to make certain dialogue and scenes to work, it’s largely a distraction from the main objective of getting Indy forward on his quest and the overall film could’ve been much tighter had some of the unnecessarily side character work been trimmed or better integrated into the story.
Mads Mikkelsen is his consummate, professional self as the villain of the film, and although the script does not allow him to be as complex as his fantastic turn as Le Chiffre in the James Bond film “Casino Royale,” he does bring gravitas and menace to the role that really works to help provide stakes in an accelerated timeline for Indy to find the titular MacGuffin dial before the bad guys do.
While Mangold is a terrific filmmaker, “Dial Of Destiny” doesn’t quite have the same pop that seminal classics “Raiders Of The Lost Ark or “The Last Crusade” do and his film feels a bit bloated within its run time. But within these larger context of current cinema trends, this is one of the better summer blockbusters to come along in recent years.
Action sequences are exceptionally well measured and cut together to maintain a pique of interest that really makes some of the more mundane storytelling stick out as a sore thumb.
In the context of the overall Indiana Jones franchise, “Dial of Destiny” might have a case to be the third best of the five films, though more than likely most cinephiles will put “Temple Of Doom” above it with “Crystal Skull” by far the worst of the five.
It does serve as a terrific endcap to Ford’s illustrious career as the character and has enough spectacle and nostalgia to really make something audiences might want to check out in theaters, though it does not quite approach the same highs that “Top Gun: Maverick” and “No Time To Die” did for their respective franchises.
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