“Yesterday belongs to us, Doctor Jones.”
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a fun attempt at returning to form after the somewhat disastrous response to 2008’s Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. Out with aliens and Communists, in with what works, along with the tried and true. The Nazis, the bad guys everyone loves to hate, are back. A new wrinkle is added in this one, in accordance with the earlier entries and their arcane flourishes; time travel.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is a 2023 Disney and Lucasfilm production. The film is directed by James Mangold from a story written by Jez and John Henry Butterworth, David Koepp, and Mangold. Harrison Ford returns to star alongside Karen Allen and John Rhys-Davies. They are joined by Mads Mikkelsen, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Toby Jones, Ethann Isidore, Shaunette Renée Wilson, Boyd Holbrook, and Antonio Banderas.
“You should’ve stayed in New York.”
“You should’ve stayed out of Poland!”
It is 1944. Indiana Jones (Ford) is once again confronting his old adversaries, the Nazis, on behalf of the Allied governments. He infiltrates aboard a plunder train alongside his associate Basil Shaw (Jones). The train is an armored and armed vehicle loaded with soldiers and stuffed with antiquities and artifacts stolen from civilians and conquered countries the Germans have defeated. Jones and Shaw realize their intended target is a fake, a forgery. However, buried in the spoils is something more significant. They dig out a small, dusty, incomplete machine which they recognize as a piece of the Antikythera, a device built by the famed Archimedes himself which is rumored to have mystical properties. They snag it more or less at the same time that Jürgen Voller (Mikkelsen), a young Nazi scientist aboard the train, comes to the same conclusion about the forgery and the presence of the Antikythera. Alarms ring out and a chase begins with the archaeologist and his associate trying to escape the numerous alerted German soldiers pursuing them inside and atop the train as Allied bombs drop around the tracks and bridge. Faced with certain death (again) Indy and Basil jump for it.
It is 1969. The space program is in full swing, sending men to the moon and Doctor Jones is being retired. Something of a shadow of himself, Indy lives in the past, haunted by memories of what could have been. His marriage to Marion (Allen) has collapsed like a Neolithic ruin and his best friend is a bottle. He can’t reach his students in class, can’t hold their interest, though he tries valiantly with the incredible story of the Siege of Syracuse during 213 BC where the science of Archimedes held off a Roman assault for two whole years.
He hits a bar to mope when he’s joined by his goddaughter, Helena Shaw (Waller-Bridge). He is surprised and barely recognizes her as it’s been several years. Jones’ friendship with Shaw didn’t end well and Helena was just a child at the time. Basil developed an unhealthy obsession about the Antikythera, losing his mind over what Archimedes invention means, what it can do, and what the ramifications of it are, and Jones had to take the piece of the device from him.
Sharing her father’s passion, she’s still hunting Archimedes machine. Unfortunately, Helena brings unwanted attention upon Indy. Unbeknownst to her, she’s being followed by Voller, who has never given up on recovering the Antikythera. Now a NASA rocket scientist, he and his assistant Klaber (Holbrook) and several other goons are working alongside CIA. The lead agent on the operation, Mason, (Wilson) is troubled by Voller, his mooks, and their methodology but has to take a hands-off approach: the “ex”-Nazi Voller has been VERY helpful to NASA and their Apollo program so is granted a great deal of latitude. Voller thinks he understands the Antikythera. He’s sure it’s a time machine. Once fully assembled, he thinks it will help Germany win the war lost those twenty-five long years ago. He very much wants the machine back and his team intends to get it.
Indy takes Helena to where he’s kept the fragment, in storage at the university. With a twinkle in her eye, Shaw steals the artifact and locks Jones in as the men approach. She bails, leaving Indy to figure his own way out, which is old hat to the seasoned adventurer. Klaber and his team see no point in patience and start shooting people left and right. Doctor Jones is left disgusted by the deaths of his colleagues and coworkers.
Another chase ensues, this time Indy + police horse vs. motorcycle goon and various NYC subway cars. The absurdity steadily escalates, but Jones keeps a clear head. At this point, with all his years of experience, he possesses a stupendous degree of spatial awareness and is able to Bugs Bunny his way out of ever-tighter situations.
Jones isn’t paying attention to the depths of Shaw’s avarice and is caught flat-footed when she takes off with the Antikythera. He knows there’s only one place she can sell it. He grimly resolves to get to Shaw and get back Archimedes’ device before anyone else gets shot. He breaks out the whip, puts on the fedora, and gets on a plane to Tangiers, hoping to stay a step or two ahead of Voller’s trigger-happy thugs.
Can Indy get to Shaw before she does something stupid? Can she be convinced there are better things to do with antiquities and contraband than sell them to the highest bidder? Can the pair crack the code of the Antikythera and figure out what it’s really about? Can they keep it out of Voller’s ambitious hands? Will they be able to find the second half of the device ahead of the “ex” Nazi and his master race? The intellectual Voller’s sure he knows how to make the Antikythera work if he can completely assemble it. Can Jones and Shaw stop him or will the space-time continuum be fractured in favor of a Fourth Reich? Watch Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny to find out.
“Why are you chasing the thing that drove your father crazy?”
“Wouldn’t you?”
At 79, Harrison Ford is definitely getting too long in the tooth for this kind of role. There’s a reason this movie is one high-speed chase after another, and it’s obvious after a particularly painful moment: Harrison Ford runs like an old man. His hands shake, too. He’s shot in a way that crops his hands just out of frame, but there are a few scenes where it doesn’t work and you can see him trembling. Jones’ smug swagger is largely absent in this film, and for the most part, it’s not an artifact of age but rather bravado crumpled by loss. For decades, he’s been told that he’s obsolete, his notions outdated, that he belongs in a museum. Now with his failures mounting up and his sunset closer, doubt grows. He’s starting to believe his naysayers but remains wedded to his principles like a proper curmudgeon, refusing to go along just to get along. He’s too old for that crap anyway. His mind is still sharp, his will strong, it’s just his body can’t always keep up.
In the brief moments he’s on screen, John Rhys Davies captures the scenes and commands the camera. Though he looks a little weathered and out of place far from Egypt, once Sallah opens his mouth and cries, “Indy!” a lightning bolt of nostalgia flashes down and it feels like the sound of time being trapped in a bottle. His circumstances and occupation work in the world they’ve established in the film and the way he nopes his way out of the adventure to spend more time with his grandkids is just perfect.
Jürgen Voller is an ice-cold villain driven by his belief in his formidable intelligence and somewhat distant from his emotions. Mads Mikkelsen’s subtle performance really sets this character apart from many of the scenery-chewing heavies in the Indiana Jones series. Mikkelsen masterfully shows Jones getting under Voller’s skin oh-so-slowly and then in an incredible sequence, all at once the Nazi’s emotions explode like a tightly wound spring pressed too far.
Helena Shaw is a complex individual and Phoebe Waller-Bridge has a handle on Shaw’s several layers. She’s a chameleon, a Cheshire cat, grabbing her prize and vanishing with a smile. Shaw has a multifaceted, brilliant mind (which she keeps telling people about), always making plans within plans within plans, that leaves her overconfident in certain situations and when any one of her plates stops spinning, Waller-Bridge expresses her dismay deftly. The great thing about Waller-Bridge’s portrayal is that her character thinks she’s always got a way out and her daffy arrogance comically crumbles when things don’t fall into place.
Antonio Banderas has a small part to play in the film as Renaldo, a master diver and ship captain who has known Indy for a long time. Banderas is very comfortable and gives off the vibe of a man who’d survived one or two of Dr. Jones’ adventures and has a weary expectation of what is to come.
Boyd Holbrook is getting very good at playing the (a little too) dangerous, maybe crazy, right-hand man with the itchy trigger finger. He does it with aplomb and has performed the psycho rather well in several films and tv shows including Netflix’s The Sandman and Mangold’s own 2017 film, Logan This reviewer hopes he will do some rom-coms so he doesn’t get typecast. On the other hand, he’s got these implacable, dead-eyed, Anton Chigurh-type characters down pat.
Shaunette Renée Wilson plays Agent Mason. She’s brash, flamboyant and powerful. She holds her own in her scenes with the hard-core, homicidal Nazis. One has to wonder though. When they told her, ”No witnesses,” in response to her asking why they have to shoot up every joint they’re in, it never seems to occur to her that she’s been a witness the whole time.
It was truly wonderful to see Karen Allen appear as she did in the movie. Her time on screen is a moment of maximum squee. There is a pattern in the film of riffing on jokes from earlier Jones films but reversing them so there’s a bit of surprise, a shot of nostalgia and hopefully they still land with a laugh. Some work. Most don’t. Karen Allen’s moment most certainly does.
There are a lot of things to like about Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. If this is truly curtains on the adventures of Doctor Jones, it’s a decent way to go out, providing they actually stop making these movies. The sun is setting on Indiana, and maybe that’s a good thing. The globe-trotting Doctor Jones is a shlubbier, shabbier, poor man’s James Bond. In the film, Henry Jones, Jr. struggles with his loneliness and fears that time has passed him by. The character and concept of Doctor Jones the “archaeologist” is also old and obsolete. There’s a degree of imperial insolence involved in traveling the world and robbing graves for a living then displaying the purloined property in your museum that most countries and cultures wouldn’t abide in this day and age.
There are lovely locations and the kind of location-hopping viewers have come to expect from the series, along with the trademark red-annotated map keeping pace with the traveling. There are some excellent performances. Grumpy, old man Jones yelling at clouds was pretty fun. Watching a weary, crotchety, cantankerous Indiana express the reasons for his adopted, abrasive shell and convey the pathos of his loss was one of the most emotional scenes in any of the Indiana Jones films. Jones opens himself to care about others once more and relearns the joy of discovery with the fate of the world in the balance (again). The globe has been crisscrossed several times during Doctor Jones’ adventures over the years, but Dial of Destiny has the first underwater action sequence, a beautifully shot dive to a Roman wreck on the dark sea floor.
This is the first Indiana Jones movie not helmed by Steven Spielberg and it shows. There is a rhythm to the incredibly kinetic action sequences in the earlier films, a beat that often is perfectly tied in tandem with John Williams’ wonderful score. Something is off in the Dial of Destiny, the action has a nice yet different beat but it’s hard to dance to (or follow). One chase scene is followed by the next, followed by brief dialogue, then off to the races again. Then another chase in a different vehicle. Then another one after a brief respite. The continuous chases blur together and there really isn’t much sense of danger.
There’s a moment when 79-year-old Indiana Jones catches a slug to the chest. This reviewer was curious if the old man would receive any first aid, but he fumbles along through the rest of the movie only slightly handicapped by his gunshot wound. The filmmakers forget about it, until they don’t at the very end, and the scene is, “Oh yeah. Old guy is bleeding out!” Oops.
Even for the world of Indiana Jones, some of the coincidences are just absurdly implausible. There’s a moment where a character pickpockets several random people, going down several random streets, and then turns a corner to come face-to-face with Voller and his hitmen who were last seen on a disabled boat far from shore.
This reviewer has decided he needs a plunder train as a platform for personal transportation. It’s gotta run better than the MTA’s F. The familiar sound effect of the Millennium Falcon’s engines failing is added to a Heinkel He 111 as it stalls out. The Wilhelm Scream, which can be heard in every single Indiana Jones movie, is also present. Many jokes are recycled from earlier installments. “Hey, remember this part?” Even with their reversals, it is still a heavy-handed heap of nostalgia humor that Mangold and his team are asking you to swallow moment after moment.
The Dial of Destiny itself, the Antikythera, is a less sophisticated TaRDiS, but it can get the job done and for one brief, shining moment, Doctor Jones gets to see what it’s like to be that other Doctor, the star of the eponymous, long-running BBC show about a time-traveling police box and the weirdo who lives inside.
There is a callback to the Siege of Syracuse that pays off nicely if only any of Indy’s students were paying attention. The reunion of many of the principal actors from the past was nicely handled. There was only one glaring exception. Ke Huy Quan’s absence isn’t remarked upon. It’s as if he and Kate Capshaw’s Willie Scott fell off the planet between 1984’s Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom which takes place in 1935, a year before 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark is set. The lack of an appearance by Short Round or any explanation as to his whereabouts is really inexcusable.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny opens in theatres Friday, June 30th.
Indiana Jones and related characters were created by George Lucas and Steven Spielberg.
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Brian Isaacs - Executive Editor / Publisher