‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ movie review: Harrison Ford’s farewell to the franchise is a delightful exercise

A still from ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’

Yes, nostalgia is toxic, but Alan Moore must have been talking of the mindless variety, that blindly insists the good old days were the best. It cannot be such a bad thing to immerse oneself in a world and with characters who gave us so much joy and thrills in the past.

So it is with James Mangold’s Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the fifth movie in the franchise that started with 1981’s Raiders of the Lost Ark, which introduced Indiana Jones (Harrison Ford), an archaeologist who goes all over the world saving artefacts from the bad guys. The movie, directed by Steven Spielberg from a George Lucas story was supposed to be based on matinee serials, which, incidentally, none of us in India had ever watched. We were nevertheless awestruck by the bouncing boulder and the melting face.

Raiders was followed by 1984’s Temple of Doom, replete with chilled monkey’s brains and Amrish Puri, Last Crusade (1989) where Sean Connery has immense fun as Indy’s Grail-obsessed father, and the vaguely inconclusive Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in 2008. There have been talks of an Indiana Jones 5, for the longest, apparently from the late 70s, and the wait, my friends, is definitely worth it.

Dial of Destiny, starting with the 25-minute gob-smacking opening sequence, featuring a de-aged Indy fighting the old faithfuls, the Nazis, in a crumbling building, a train and sundry locomotives, and ending in a battle 2000 years ago, is so full of fun and poignancy as to be absolutely irresistible.

In the prologue, in 1944, we meet the villainous Nazi astrophysicist, Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), who wants to use a dial fashioned by Greek mathematician, Archimedes to locate fissures in time, for dastardly purposes. Indy and his friend and colleague, Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), thwart Voller (atop train and bridge and all).

We then move ahead to the moon landing in 1969 and Indy’s retirement party. Indy is a lonely, broken man having lost his son in the Vietnam War and divorced his wife, Marion (Karen Allen). In a bar, he meets Shaw’s daughter, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who asks his help to recover the dial and we are off to Morocco, Spain and Greece — yay.

Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) who helped Indy with the Ark of the Covenant and the Holy Grail is now in America with his many children and grandchildren and continues to help Indy with logistics as well as his costume. Sallah also packs his passport — just in case as he wistfully tells Indy.  

Indy has a friend in every port and when he needs a diver in Spain, there is Renaldo (Antonio Banderas) to provide the boat and the equipment. Helena has her own sidekick in Teddy (Ethann Isidore), who stole her purse and never let go. The action sequences are creatively choreographed with chockfull of zip — that tuk-tuk chase was something else. The special effects are a mind-boggling testament to the boundaries routinely breached by human imagination and ingenuity.

One does not usually talk about the acting in an adventure movie, but we cannot end this review without mentioning Ford, who personifies Indy. The 80-year-old actor was not kidding when he said “I’m Indiana Jones. When I’m gone, he’s gone.” He makes for a very fit octogenarian and has a scene in shorts to prove it.

If there is one little disappointment in The Dial of Destiny, it is the antagonist. Mikkelsen, whose silky sadism almost undid James Bond in Casino Royale, seems to go no further than be a fretful academic as Voller and is no match for jolly Jonesy. Apart from that, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny delivers on all its promises from breathless action and the sweetest love story (Indy travels with Marion’s photograph) to a historical Macguffin with a touch of supernatural and finished with that rousing score from John Williams.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is currently running in theatres