Harrison Ford’s final Indiana Jones is more than adequate; just embrace the sadness
SPOILER ALERT: This review of the latest (and last?) Indiana Jones film contains no spoilers, and serves one purpose: To inform loyal fans of cinema’s greatest adventure character that this turn is better than “The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.”
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” will not clean up at the Academy Awards, to which no one cares. This does what a summer movie is designed to do: Entertain audiences, not critics.
“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” will make fans of a series that began in 1981 content, satisfied, and sad.
For fans who fell for Indiana Jones in “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” watching Indy crack the whip, and a few one liners, is satisfying, and crushing.
This is it.
There is no way Disney will pass on eventually rebooting Indiana Jones, but for multiple generations there is only one man who can wear the fedora, leather jacket and a whip.
Whereas James Bond has had multiple men play Great Britain’s secret agent, the world only knows Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones.
Ford made his fortune as an action hero, but he was never more convincing than as the adventure-crazed archaeology professor whose mission is to put rare antiquities in a museum.
Ford is now 80, and it is slightly ridiculous that he returned to the physical role that he owns, in part because Indiana Jones routinely gets his butt kicked by the bad guys before meeting their demise.
Director James Mangold sets the movie in the 1960s, but wisely steers the film back to Indiana Jones’ roots: Fighting Nazis, and, this time, age.
Watching our heroes age typically turns off audiences, but “Destiny” handles the octogenarian in the room well enough. Mostly because Ford sells it.
An Indiana Jones movie always needs a big bottle of suspension of disbelief, and “Destiny” requires no more or less than the previous four films.
Try to ignore the CGI, and parts where it’s a stuntman in Ford’s place, and this is a good Indiana Jones romp with subtle references to the previous films.
The opening action sequence is rousing. The chase scenes are plentiful, and fun. The bad guys are creative, and really bad.
As the crazed Nazi physicist, Mads Mikkelsen may be the best heavy of any of the bad guys ever to fight Indy.
Indy’s sidekick, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, doesn’t steal the film but she’s a quality complement.
The Indiana Jones “gross out” is there.
The story is ridiculous.
This series started with an archaeologist finding the ark of the covenant; witnessing a human sacrifice after the victim had his heart torn out, survived, and then being dumped into a fire pit; recovering the holy grail, and chatting with the knight who protected it; something about aliens; surviving a nuclear blast.
The hero wears a leather jacket in the middle of the desert.
If you were OK with any of those, then you will be fine with the plot, and details, of “Destiny.”
Watching Ford on screen once more with Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen) and Sallah (John Rhys-Davies), even if only for a few minutes, amid a John Williams’ score is hard-to-beat nostalgia.
After 40 years, much of the initial commercial success for “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” will be driven by nostalgia-seekers.
There is some of that here, but “Dial of Destiny” is ultimately a new film that functions as a worthy end to a franchise, and for an actor who made Indiana Jones somehow believable.
This story was originally published June 29, 2023 at 12:40 AM.
