Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
It's the years and the mileage in the final film of the Indiana Jones franchise.
A film I was both looking forward to and somewhat nervous about was Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. It’s the fifth (and final) film in the Indiana Jones series, directed by James Mangold. Harrison Ford returned to play the titular archaeologist while sharing the screen with Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, Toby Jones, Boyd Holbrook, Ethann Isidore, and Mads Mikkelsen.
I’m going to borrow a brief plot summary from IMDB, just to give a sense of what the film was about (I’m not going to get into too much in the way of specifics so as to avoid not spoiling things).
Experience the return of legendary hero, Indiana Jones, in the fifth installment of this beloved swashbuckling series of films. Finding himself in a new era, approaching retirement, Indy wrestles with fitting into a world that seems to have outgrown him. But as the tentacles of an all-too-familiar evil return in the form of an old rival, Indy must don his hat and pick up his whip once more to make sure an ancient and powerful artifact doesn't fall into the wrong hands.
Dial of Destiny is a tough film to evaluate because it’s a great film, but I certainly don’t think it’s bad (it’s good and occasionally very good) and I’m glad it exists.
As I’ll explain in this piece, I’m somewhere closer to where Matt Zoller Seitz (one of my absolute favorite film critics) came down on this film (though, surprisingly, I don’t go quite as far as he does).
One metaphor I’ve thought about for this film is that of the old roller-coaster. It’s a little herky-jerky and feels rusty at times but also has the ability to thrill and excite you. Dial of Destiny does what it’s supposed to do but it’s not quite as good as when it was at its peak condition, particularly in terms of the pacing. While the original trilogy films found a way to seemlessly blend the starting and stopping of the action, Dial doesn’t quite get into that space and thus it feels a little halting.
That cuts to the heart of it—it’s not one of those original Indiana Jones films. You’ll always be comparing it to those films, even if you don’t want to you cannot help it, but it just doesn’t have that magic. However, nothing really does and it’s why those films (especially, in my mind Raiders of the Lost Ark and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade) are so worthy of reverence.
When the action got too outrageous, or the dialogue felt a little stilted, I had to remember to compare it to… say, a mid-tier Marvel film rather than perhaps the greatest action film ever made. There are certainly examples of those films that I don’t think changed any paradigms but I’m still glad they existed and enjoyed them.
Mads Mikkelsen, playing Nazi scientist Jürgen Voller, could have more extensively used. He’s a great actor in villainous roles like this one. The film didn’t really give him the time to shine. Mikkelsen was great, I just wanted more of his greatness on screen.
The directing of the film, especially the action set-pieces, were good and for the most part devoid of noticeable CGI. After having watched Ford vs. Ferrari, I felt comfortable with this film being in James Mangold’s hands. What ended up on the screen in Dial was certainly in keeping with what he did in that film. It certainly wasn’t at the level of Spielberg in Raiders (what is?) but it looked markedly better than Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.
There were real locations rather than just computer-generated spaces. The scenes in Morocco certainly call to mind the Cairo of Raiders of the Lost Ark, while I enjoyed the journey to Sicily and the use of its famous locations (the Ear of Dionysus cave, for example).
You did have CGI in the form of de-aging for the first part of the film, set in 1944 and thus needing a younger version of Indiana Jones. While there were times that the effects felt very apparent, on the whole they were not too distracting and I did not mind them. That opening sequence was quite well done, a favorite section of the movie for me, and had that classic Indiana Jones sensibility.
The plot does get into some… out there places at the end of the film as Mangold and his screenwriters made some choices I might not have made (that Zoller Seitz alluded to in his tweet); nevertheless, it still felt like an Indiana Jones movie in a way that the plot of Crystal Skull really did not. Just because it wasn’t what I would have done or liked doesn’t mean it was bad. Mangold and his team just made a choice and followed it through.
Ford did everything one could have wanted in his fifth and final performance as Indiana Jones. There were times where Ford’s age (not the character’s, but the actor) showed, but I don’t think they were too prominent or took away from the film as a whole. There were also moments where Ford was able to summon that old Indy magic, and also moments of… dare I say, pathos? It was a better way for Ford to put a bow on playing one of his most iconic characters.
There is a reckoning with age, the regrets one has in their life, and the idea of having a place in a world that wants to leave you behind, all of which give the film perhaps more weight than we might have expected. That said, it doesn’t weigh the film down. It’s there and it adds depth, but it doesn’t dominate such that you lose the sense of fun and adventure integral to these stories.
In addition to the set pieces, and both Ford and Mikkelsen’s performances, Phoebe Waller-Bridge gives this movie something special. The energy she brings is in keeping with her performance in Fleabag. Waller-Bridge gives Dial something that makes it more than just a pure nostalgia/wrap-up kind of thing. She’s a fascinating combination of Indiana Jones and Marion Ravenwood, and honestly I could see… maybe not an action career but roles in adventure films popping up more and more for her.
It’s interesting to think about the female characters in Indiana Jones films as representing classic cinematic archetypes. Marion feels at times like a Katherine Hepburn character, one who won’t back down. Waller-Bridge’s Helena has a kind of irreverence that would be in keeping with actors from the time the film was set (the late 1960s). She has some of that Katherine Hepburn energy as well as a dash of Audrey Hepburn as well.
While Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny isn’t one of the best films I’ve seen recently, and is certainly well below the heights of the original trilogy, I think one can do a lot worse for a fun and exciting summer blockbuster. It’s considerably better than Crystal Skull, which makes for a worthy and appropriate end to this franchise. To evaluate it, you have to take it on its own terms. It’s trying to be nostalgic (as it engages with notions of legacy) and it’s trying to make you have a good time at the movie theater. It’s fun, it’s well made, and it gives you everything you’d want out of an Indiana Jones movie. No, it’s not doing those things at the same level as Raiders, but it’s still checking those boxes and, thus, it should be considered a success.