DAVID ADAMS watches Harrison Ford’s final outing as Indiana Jones…
Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny (AU – M/UK – 12A/US – PG-13)
In a word: Conclusive
Harrison Ford stars as Indiana Jones for the fifth time in Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny.
And so it comes to this. In this, the fifth film on from where it all began with 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, we again encounter Harrison Ford starring as the brown fedora-wearing, whip-cracking archaeologist and adventurer Indiana Jones (aka Dr Henry Jones, Jr) in what’s to be his lasting outing as the character.
“As one would expect with an Indiana Jones film, there’s plenty of exotic locales, puzzles to solve, moments of suspense and over-the-top action – including do or die moments aboard planes, trains and…well, you get the picture. Some old faces return including Indy’s Egyptian pal Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) and there’s some welcome new ones – Antonio Banderas plays Renaldo, an old Greek friend of Indy’s who also happens to be an expert diver – and, in all, there’s a general sense of finality to this film…”
The film opens with a flashback to the past – World War II is coming to a close and Indy (Ford, who is now 80, is aged appropriately using special effects) and his friend, Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), find themselves aboard a Nazi train filled with plunder being taken back to the Reich. There they come face-to-face with a Nazi who also a passion for the past, Dr Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), and who is in possession of half of a powerful ancient dial known as the Antikythera created by none other than Archimedes.
Flash forward to 1969 and the aging Dr Jones is something of a broken man. Gone is his cocksure attitude and wry sense of humour: instead we find a man living in a squalid New York apartment whose personal relationships are in tatters, whose career as an eminent professor is coming to a rather sad end and who is all too quick to turn to drink as a result.
Yet, when his rather relentless god-daughter and Basil’s daughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) – herself an archaeologist – shows up, Indy is once again soon swept up in an adventure that helps him to recapture some of what’s been lost.
As one would expect with an Indiana Jones film, there’s plenty of exotic locales, puzzles to solve, moments of suspense and over-the-top action – including do or die moments aboard planes, trains and…well, you get the picture. Some old faces return including Indy’s Egyptian pal Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) and there’s some welcome new ones – Antonio Banderas plays Renaldo, an old Greek friend of Indy’s who also happens to be an expert diver – and, in all, there’s a general sense of finality to this film that even 2008’s slightly disappointing Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull didn’t have.
With James Mangold, of Logan and Wolverine fame, taking over as director from Steven Spielberg (Spielberg directed all four previous films), Dial of Destiny carries with a strong sense of nostalgia for those who were there at the very beginning but also provides a strong stand-alone story for those who may be coming late to the party.
It’s a fitting farewell, tinged with some sadness, for one of the all-time great action heroes. This film never reaches the heights of Raiders which brought with it new possibilities of how stories could be told on screen, but, then, it was never about that. Indiana Jones And The Dial of Destiny was always about providing a satsifying ending to a much-loved character, and, in that, it achieves its aim.
