Year of Release: 2023
Director: James Mangold
Starring: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Mads Mikkelsen, Antonio Banderas, Karen Allen, Toby Jones, John Rhys-Davies, Ethann Isidore, Thomas Kretschmann, Boyd Holbrook, Olivier Richters, Martin McDougall, Alaa Safi, Nasser Memarzia
Genre: Action, Adventure
Score out of ten (whole numbers only): 5
Watch it on Amazon
Synopsis and Review
Following the slightly less well received "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull", Steven Spielberg decided to sit this last installment out, at least from a directorial perspective, as he still is credit as a producer. The film once again follows Indiana Jones, whom we find about to retire, as the year is 1969. He's recently separated from Marion, as they both can't seem to come to terms with the death of their son Mutt in the Vietnam War. Indy receives a visit from Helena Shaw, his goddaughter (daughter of his close friend Basil Shaw), who is researching the Archimedes Dial, an instrument that reveals time fissures, allowing for time travel. Indy and Helena retrieve half of the Dial from the college archives, only for them to be attacked by a posse bossed around by the nefarious Dr. Schmidt, in reality a Nazi whose real name is Voller, someone who has a diabolical agenda of his own (and whom Indy had faced before). Helena manages to escape with the Dial, but as it turns out, she's intent on selling it on the black market in order to pay off her own debts. Indy follows her to Tangier, where she's involved in a bidding auction for the Dial, only for Voller's posse to show up once again, and highjack the instrument. Indy, Helena, her young asistant Teddy, all go to Greece, as they figure that they need to locate the other half of the Dial, but in order to do so, they need another relic that provides that clear path. However, Voller is chasing them closely, and once again the group has to fight for their lives.
There's always a joyful sentiment of revisiting a character and an actor as iconic as Indiana Jones and Harrison Ford respectively. Steven Spielberg's "Raiders of the Lost Ark" is a seminal film, one of the most inspired and iconic action/adventure films of all time, the one that firstly introduced the character to the world. And while the subsequent films featuring this character have been uneven in their quality, they've always been very watchable due to the combination of the inventive scripts, smart casting (hello Sean Connery and River Phoenix in 1989's "The Last Crusade"), and the impeccable directorial prowess of Steven Spielberg. This last episode of the series feels, and probably more so than any of the prior installments, expensive. Meaning, the budget is visible, in terms of the production design with its incredible detail, the visual effects, and even the impeccable costume design. It's however a demonstration that for all its superficially well rendered scenes, the script itself feels a bit forced and ultimately unnecessary. What always worked so well for this central character was the temporal context in which it moved: the late 1930s to the mid 1940s, when the Second World War took place, but also where Indy's journey of archaelogical discovery was entwined with preventing a much darker doomsday scenario to occur in the world. Both "Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" and now "Dial of Destiny", place an older Indy in later decades, one where the character is coming to terms with being older, with the passing of loved ones, and ultimately questioning if a life of adventure has left him alone. And while this pending mortality shroud does humanize him further, the stories themselves just don't feel quite as efficiently buttoned up, which includes paper thin villains, and situations themselves where the stunts keep getting higher, since ultimately the heart is no longer really there. And that problem pops up in "Dial of Destiny" as well, where the goddaughter (!) scenario feels contrived, with the character having a con-artist demeanor to herself (!), and where the characters who pop up to add some color, such as Antonio Banderas' Renaldo, has literally nothing to do. It's a film that looks good, but feels poorly resolved, with a rather pedestrian storyline, with another Nazi villain (the underused Mads Mikkelsen), who wants to travel in time to do worse things with the fate of the world. The original trilogy managed to hint at what would happen should evil triumph, these last two episodes tried to over justify themselves, and in a way, destroyed a bit of the mystique of the series. Harrison Ford is great as always, and he has good support from Mads Mikkelsen, Karen Allen and Toby Jones. Phoebe Waller-Bridge feels miscast (the part probably needed someone like Haley Atwell), and most of the supporting cast fails to register much. Phedon Papamichael's cinematography is impeccable, as is Adam Stockhausen's production design, Joanna Johnston's costumes, and John Williams' magical score. It's a minor episode in a great saga.
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