Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is never boring but also never really fun. It’s modestly interesting about what happens next, with a mix of imaginative story beats and the nostalgic foundation everyone brings to the theater. It’s maddening choices, promising beats and good vibes for a legendary actor once again wearing one of the most famous hats in movie history. It should be better. It could be worse. Both are true. “The Dial of Destiny” is a hard movie to hate in an era of extreme online critical opinion, which is nice. It’s also an Indiana Jones movie that’s hard to love, which makes this massive fan of the original trilogy a little sad.
The weird mix of good and bad starts at the start or at least it does in my memory because I’m pretty sure I nodded off during the first 10 minutes thanks to jet lag with a sequence set in World War II that features Indy (Harrison Ford) teaming up with his old friend Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) as they try to stop fleeing Nazis from stealing historical artifacts. Jones looks normal, but Ford here is an uncanny valley occupant, a figure made of de-aged CGI that never looks quite human he doesn’t move or even sound quite right either. This isn’t the first time nor will it be the last when watching “The Dial of Destiny” feels like trying to catch smoke with your hands, it sets up a standard of overused effects that are probably its biggest flaw as people who make movies might say if you asked them what was wrong with their film.
Which is too bad because the structure of this prologue or whatever is fundamentally strong: Indy escapes capture from a Nazi played by Thomas Kretschmann, but more important than that we’re introduced to Jurgen Voller (a de-aged Mads Mikkelsen), who seems to be some sort of Nazi astrophysicist and, while looking for something called the Lance of Longinus, has stumbled upon half of the Antikythera, or Archimedes’ Dial a real Ancient Greek item that could reportedly predict astronomical positions for decades. The movie gives this magical Indy franchise treatment in ways that I won’t spoil other than to say it’s not as explicitly religious as items like the Ark of the Covenant or The Holy Grail other than, as Voller says, it almost makes its owner God.
After a cleverly staged sequence involving anti aircraft fire and dozens of dead Nazis in which Indy fends off what looks like every WWII era German plane that was ever built using only a machine gun he’s holding sideways while running full speed through an airfield, “The Dial of Destiny” jumps to 1969. An old Indiana Jones is retiring from what looks like Hunter College, he’s unsure what comes next at least in part because he’s separated from Marion after their son Mutt died in Vietnam. The best thing about “The Dial of Destiny” starts here: It’s Harrison Ford underplaying the emotional currents flickering beneath Indy’s grumpy exterior. Ford could’ve phoned this one in and no one would’ve been surprised or even particularly mad about it, but you can tell that he really thought about where this man would be emotionally at this point in his life and some of the dramatic choices he makes in the back half are genuinely remarkable acting decisions, reminding one how good he can be with the right material. His work here made me truly hope that somewhere down the line we get another brilliant drama starring Harrison Ford – who spent so much of his career making them in the ‘80s.
But let’s get back to the action/adventure stuff. Right after accepting his retirement gift, Indy is whisked away on an adventure with Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), the daughter of Basil and Indy’s goddaughter. Basil apparently got obsessed with the dial after they encountered it 25 years ago, and Indy told him he would destroy their half of the dial. But Indiana Jones never destroys historical artifacts. While they’re getting the dial from a storeroom, they’re attacked by Voller (Thomas Kretschmann) and his men, leading to a horse chase through some subway tunnels during a parade or something? It’s a messy, weird action sequence that roars with nothing but nostalgia power an iconic hero riding through someone else’s parade.
And then suddenly we’re in Tangier or whatever because Helena wants to sell her half of the dial, and this dumb movie injects its final major character into this thing in a sidekick named Teddy (Ethann Isidore). From here, “The Dial of Destiny” basically becomes a standard Indiana Jones chase movie. They’ve got to stay ahead of the bad guys while also leading them to what they’re trying to uncover.
James Mangold has delivered on “old man hero action” before with “Logan,” but he gets lost along this journey, unable to stage action sequences that are anywhere near as thrilling as how Spielberg stages them. Yes, we’re in a different era now than when Spielberg was making these movies, CGI is more prevalent than ever before. But that doesn’t excuse clunky, awkward, incoherent action choreography like what we often see here. Look at something like “John Wick: Chapter 4,” or even better yet I’m really not supposed to talk about this for another couple weeks even though you know those characters are enhanced by CGI effects almost all the time you still can tell where they’re at, what they’re trying to do and what’s stopping them.
That basic action structure often falls apart in “The Dial of Destiny.” There’s a car chase scene through Tangier that’s incredibly frustrating because it’s just a blur of activity that should work on paper but has no weight and no real stakes. A later scene in a shipwreck that should be claustrophobic is similarly clunky from the standpoint of basic composition. Look I know not everybody can be Steven Spielberg. But even the straightforward framing of action sequences in “Raiders of the Lost Ark” or “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade” is gone here, replaced by sequences that are so expensive they somehow drove up the budget to $300 million. Early and often, I wished for this movie’s $100 million version.
It would be much better if “The Dial of Destiny” didn’t worry so much about spending that huge budget. The movie comes alive when Indy and Helena start actual treasure hunting, and John Williams’ all-timer theme kicks up again. It ends with a bang events and ideas I wish had been foregrounded in the preceding 130 minutes, which are something of a slog to be sure but not without their pleasures. Ultimately, “The Dial of Destiny” is about a man who wants to control history being thwarted by a man who wants to appreciate it but has arguably let himself get stuck in it through regret or inaction (or both). There’s a powerful emotional center here, but it comes too late to have the impact it could with a stronger script; one can almost feel how many times this thing was sanded down by producers and rewrites, how many rough edges it lost that were necessary for anything to work at all.
Reportedly, when he passed the whip to James Mangold, Steven Spielberg told him “It’s a movie that’s a trailer from beginning to end always be moving.” Sure. Trailers aren’t boring. But they’ve never been as entertaining as this entire movie is at its best moments.
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