Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny (PG13)
154 minutes, opens on Thursday
3 stars
The story: In 1944 during World War II, artefact-hunting archaeologist Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford) and his friend Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) stop Nazi scientist Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) from getting his hands on one-half of an ancient dial devised by Archimedes that can enable time travel. Twenty-five years later, Basil’s daughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who is also Indy’s god-daughter, shows up and invites him on a search for the other half of the dial together. But their plans are disrupted by Voller, who will stop at nothing to get the dial and change the course of history.
There is a scene early in the fifth and final film of the Indiana Jones franchise that shows the famed titular hero, played by the 80-year-old leading man, groggily pulling a shirt over his aged body to yell at his young, hippie neighbours for making too much noise.
When the first movie Raiders Of The Lost Ark was released in 1981, Indy (and by extension Ford) was a whip-cracking heart-throb in his prime whose archaeology students batted eyes at him. He was cool and sexy.
Yet, in Dial Of Destiny, which is set in 1969 – the year of the moon landing – a point is being made: Indy is sad, old and lonely.
The entire sequel can be summed up as Helena showing up to bring a bitter and downcast Indy on one fateful final adventure that rejuvenates his passion for life, or – as an alternative title might go – Indiana Jones And How He Got His Groove Back.
Dial Of Destiny is a very competently made film, with a final act that is admirably audacious. And American director James Mangold (Logan, 2017) checks all the boxes of an Indy movie in a bloated 154-minute runtime.
Impressive action set pieces from a heart-stopping tuk-tuk chase through the streets of Morocco to a fight atop a train? Check. Nazis? Check?
Sassy female foil? Thanks to Waller-Bridge’s breezy performance, check. John Williams’ iconic score? Check, of course.
There is even a precocious street urchin played by French actor Ethann Isidore, more than evoking American actor Ke Huy Quan’s Short Round in Indiana Jones And The Temple Of Doom (1984).
But all the beats of an Indiana Jones movie, including appearances from the franchise’s earliest actors like John Rhys-Davies as Indy’s old ally Sallah, do not quite capture the magic that made veteran Hollywood film-maker Steven Spielberg’s original such a hit.
For one thing, it is worth wondering if any fans of the first few films who fell in love with the swashbuckling, daredevil charisma of a young, womanising Indiana Jones would want to see such a depressed, rueful version of the character.
And another poignant fact is this: Raiders Of The Lost Ark, being one of the blueprints modern blockbusters are modelled upon, must have been magical to watch in 1981.
But after 40 years of tentpoles featuring dinosaurs, aliens, robots, wizards and superheroes, it is hard to make an artefact-hunting action-adventure feel fresh again.
Hot take: It looks and sounds like an Indiana Jones film but the sense of melancholy that permeates it makes Dial Of Destiny a little too sad.