<em>Julia Hamilton finds Dial of Destiny just a bit dull.</em>
To use the word resurrect-ion to describe Harrison Ford’s appearance after such a long gap (Crystal Skull dropped in 2008) in this fifth and final instalment of the Indiana Jones franchise is a bit of a contradiction. When we first meet Indy in the opening sequences of the half-hour long prelude of Dial of Destiny, he’s been de-aged rather successfully, so much so that he looks rather younger than he did in the original Raiders of the Lost Ark. No resurrection needed, just lashings of CGI.
For this last outing, however, a couple of things have changed: Spielberg has stepped back and been replaced by James Mangold as director, who knows his way around but somehow lacks Spielberg’s magic touch, and Ford has a glamorous new side-kick, Phoebe Waller-Bridge of Fleabag fame. Ford apparently wanted a woman he could feel on equal terms with – very “now” – rather than some old mistress from other days and he’s certainly met his match in Waller-Bridge’s Helena, his “god-daughter” and, as it turns out, frenemy. Helena is the feisty daughter of Indy’s old mucker Basil Shaw (the always-glorious Toby Jones). The fact that she’s about three feet taller than Jones is just one of those genetic quirks that happens.
In the de-aged portion of Dial of Destiny we’re with Indy in the final days of WWII. The Führer has holed up in his Berlin bunker, allowing some of his henchman to escape with a bunch of looted art and artefacts; cue Indy’s attempt to stop them. We meet Mads Mikkelsen as Nazi mastermind Jurgen Voller, as well as Basil, both of whom really, really want the dial-doodah of the title, allegedly invented by Archimedes, that pinpoints fissures in time and bestows the ability to re-write history on whoever controls it. It’s all a bit vague.
Indiana and Toby face off against Voller and assorted orcs atop a train speeding through the European countryside, homage to the derring- do of yesteryear, if heavily enhanced by CGI. There are so many chase scenes in this film that the profound meaning of the dial thing is some-what overlain. It’s just a great excuse to make a movie, as the bouncy alliteration of the title makes clear.
After 30 minutes or so we finally get to meet the Indiana Jones of the late 1960s, who looks pretty much as Harrison Ford does now, just retiring from his job as a distinguished academic in the field of archaeology. Enter Helena, also a distinguished archaeologist, who uses Uncle Indy as a means of procuring the dial before running off with it herself. Soon Voller shows up. He too wants the DoD, although, please note, only half of this history-altering machine exists. The quest is for the missing bit.
The plot is, of course, insanely complex and involves so much world travel that rather charming old-fashioned maps are provided for the use of the bemused viewer. Nice idea, but the world passes by in a blur from Athens one minute to Tangier the next and God knows where else after that, before another dazzling chase on a boat in Spain or in a plane upends the whole lot. But at the heart of it is the fact that Voller (suppressing his Nazi past) has somehow insinuated himself into the American space programme and comes across Indy by accident in his pursuit of Helena.
The greatest set-piece of the film is the chase through New York’s celebrated ticker-tape parade for the returning astronauts, which culminates with Indy riding a horse into the 59th Street subway and onto the tracks directly in front of a speeding train, as one does. He escapes, somehow, but it’s all pie in the sky as to how. Does it matter that the viewer is being hoodwinked? Not really. It’s all part and parcel of the Indiana Jones experience.
However absurd and over-complic-ated the plot, it’s hard to resist Harris- on Ford, who is even now ridiculous- ly gorgeous as the daring explorer, 42 years after he first donned his iconic brown fedora. His humour and intelligence and wry take on life somehow make one believe that if he’s around all’s well with the world and that sooner or later the forces of darkness will be vanquished.
But as Indy says to his old friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) when he offers to accompany him to Tangier in pursuit of the lost half of the DoD: “This is not an adventure, those days have come and gone.” And they really have. However hard the film tries to spice everything up and inject the old magic into the pursuit of the Dial of Destiny, the whole premise feels off. Early on in the film Indiana says to Helena, “Why are you chasing a thing that drove your father crazy?”
Why indeed? Indiana Jones and his Dial is an elaborate wild goose chase that ends up going nowhere. It’s not so much that the concept is out-of-date, which it is, but that for all the fireworks and special effects the end result is just a bit dull.
