'Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny' Review: The greatest hits disc has broken
James Mangold takes a big hack at the plate here, or does he?
Early on in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, an old Indy (Harrison Ford) is stretched out asleep over a recliner. An old, broken down hero out of the game, hurtling towards Father Time at his own pace. He walks like a torn page out of a comic book, creaking and bending into the latest lecture he’s giving--the look of a guy who spent too much time in deadly caves.
Something is missing in his quaint life, but the audience knows this peaceful tranquility won’t last. A big studio isn’t taking a relic out of the coffin to put a domesticated Mr. Jones on display for a couple hours. That would be too sublime and unexpected. Sooner rather than later, Ford’s classic fedora and whip will be taken out of retirement.
Jones will be called back into action by a friend who longs for the good, old days of aspirin and danger. He’ll face a bad guy (Mads Mikkelsen, cashing a check as a Hitler rip-off), reconnect with an old family member (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), and come to the eventual realization that the recliner was a wiser choice.
Here’s the thing. With James Mangold at the helm, I expected more out of this fifth round with a character who hasn’t looked great since he prowled around the desert with his dad (Sean Connery). Crystal Skull was entertaining yet derivative, but Dial of Destiny is a clear sign of a deceased franchise poking its head out of the ground to find zero new ground.
Give the Fast & Furious gang and the comic book heroes some flack, but at least they’re either super-powered or young. Ford has kept himself in remarkable shape, but it’s no match for the John Wick-type beatings he takes over the course of this film. He’s thrown here, punched there, nearly stabbed and shot, and limping often.
The big problem is the screenplay does a lot of limping, also known as useful walking all over the filmgoer’s schedule. This movie had no business being two and a half hours long, and you’ll feel the second half wash over you like a July afternoon at Forest Park. The pace deadens, the characters run out of adventure energy, and the whole thing feels like a charade.
A scene near the end makes you wonder what the film could have looked like if they had ditched the tired greatest hits retreaded path, opting instead for a more inspired approach. Mangold and three other writers didn’t deliver, which left the actors with little to play with.
Waller-Bridge is usually terrific, but she’s miscast here. Her character’s reason to exist never gives her the proper ammo to build a performance with, thus zapping any real need to care for her two-side playing thief. Mikkelsen suffers from the same fate, wrapped up in a formulaic villain.
Ford looks at ease and is able to step into this character’s skin, but the movie becomes less and less about him as the running time stretches on. If this is his swan song, it was fumbled.
A de-aging sequence goes on too long, starting at wired visually and then retiring near fried. Little of anything works here, except for when the weary Indy is on display.
My advice: Rewatch Raiders of the Lost Ark. Get lost in The Temple of Doom. Chase down The Last Crusade again. All of those films are far superior to the Dial of *boring* Destiny.
Some relics need to stay buried… in a recliner.