Title: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
Release Date: June 30, 2023
Director: James Mangold
Production Company: Walt Disney Pictures | Paramount Pictures | Lucasfilm Ltd.
Summary/Review:
The first question I have for this movie is “why?” The Last Crusade was a perfect ending to the stories of Indiana Jones and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull was so poorly received, so why return to him again all these years later when its star is 80 years old? Even if the likely answer is “cash grab,” the fact that this movie was a box office bomb means that even that isn’t a satisfactory answer. I’m sad to say that this movie doesn’t justify it’s existence.
Through a flashback sequence to the last days of World War II, we learn that Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford, de-aged by CGI for this sequence) and his archaeological colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) recovered Archimedes’ Dial from the Nazi. The movie resumes in 1969, where Indy has been teaching at Hunter College in New York and is now retiring. Shaw’s daughter and Indy’s goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) arrives looking for Archimedes Dial, coincidentally at the same time the former Nazi Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) arrives with his henchmen looking for the same thing. This leads to a global chase from NYC to Morocco to the Aegean Sea to Sicily, and ultimately to ancient times!
I feel like there is a really good movie trapped within just an okay movie. For one thing, it is WAY TOO LONG. Trimming or removing the several interminable chase scenes would make a good start. I was looking forward to seeing Waller-Bridge in this movie but her performance feels constrained. Logically, as the younger actor she should take the role of the headstrong action hero while Indy relies on the wisdom of his experience and his resources. This is true to a certain extent, but then Indy is also the headstrong action hero making Helena feel extraneous. I also felt they could’ve done more to establish Indy’s desire to remain in Ancient Syracuse and his reconciliation with Marion (Karen Allen) throughout the film.
There’s a good story here about an aging man in a time of rapid scientific discovery and social change that’s touched upon early in the film with the scenes set against the parade for the Apollo astronauts, but then is dropped for much of the movie. It makes me more disappointed that there’s almost a good movie here than if they had just made some frivolous dreck.
Rating: **1/2
Panorama of the Mountains 