Proof That You Can't Turn Back Time

 It Creaks A Bit, But At The End It’s Just Right

Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny (2023) – An aging Indy is drawn back into the hunt for the Dial of Archimedes.  Reuniting the missing piece with the one in Indy’s possession may change the past forever.

Directed by James Mangold

Starring Harrison Ford, Mads Mikellsen, John Rhys-Davies, Phoebe Waller-Bridges, Toby Jones, Antonio Banderas, Karen Allen

Why I Liked It – A solid effort with the perfect ending.

 I approached this latest installment with a certain skepticism.  Harrison Ford is getting too old for these kinds of action films. The last installment was barely OK (although only the second worst in my opinion), and there’s always the question of the female lead.

Let me just leap into this last topic with both feet.  Not bringing back Marion Ravenwood after the first movie is one of the biggest blunders in the series, IMO.  Legend has it that George Lucas thought it would be cooler if Indy had his own series of “Bond Girls”.  If true, it ranks high on Lucas’s list of bonehead moves.  “Temple of Doom” is the worst movie of the franchise, and it is in large part (though not exclusively) because of Kate Capshaw as Willie Scott.  There is ZERO chemistry between the characters, and Scott is an ongoing shrill annoyance for the entire time she’s on screen.  The character lacks the charisma and confidence that Marion exudes from the very first moment she hits the screen.  The Nazi Valkyrie, Elsa Schneider (Allison Doody), is a cardboard cut-out, and I had to go back and look up who was the female lead in “Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”.  Yes, Marion appears in this one too, but it’s such a mess of a movie, and Cate Blanchett is much more the female lead. Here, it’s Phoebe Waller-Bridges who gets the unenviable slot as the latest “Indy Girl”.  As she reminded me more of Belloq (Paul Freeman) in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”, than Indy’s latest sidekick, Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), I’m afraid I never warmed to her. 

Sigh.

Like the Dr. Strange movie I reviewed a while back, this feels like a checklist movie.  It feels like the script writers received a list of iconic references from the franchise that all had to be included in this script.  The snakes, the skeletons, Sallah, the blood of Kali, blah, blah, blah.  They feel tacked on to me, although I welcomed the return of Sallah.  He’s one of the best characters in the franchise.  Rather than let the final Ford led entry to the legend stand on its own, it’s peppered with tributes to everything that went before.  Surely, there were better ways to integrate them into the story.  You could cut the tedious (and utterly ridiculous) chase between the high-powered sedan and the tuk-tuk by half and given yourself the time to do it right.

Having said all this, the story was comfortable.  It came with the necessary touches. Ford does well enough in the action parts, and the opening CGI “young Indy” segments were not terrible.  Credit where credit is due, some of those parts were very good.  Best of all was the ending.  As with so many parts of the script, they emphasized the wrong parts and didn’t give enough time to the really important bits.  But my last memory of this movie will be a happy one.

“I heard you were back.  Are you back?”

I have no idea what comes next, if anything, for this franchise.  But, it provided a coda to this portion of Indiana Jones’ legend that is sufficient unto the day.

You can stream “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” on Disney+

Rating – *** Worth A Look