Film Review - Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023)

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is the fifth and supposedly final Indiana Jones film with Harrison Ford as Dr Jones and this time he is in 1969 and is retiring from teaching but one day his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) shows up wanting his help to find the Dial of Archimedes which is said to be very powerful, also wanting it is the scientist Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) who may be related to a famous enemy from Indy’s past.

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was a movie I held out hope for despite the absence of Steven Spielberg in the directors chair though given his poor directing in 2008’s Kingdom of the Plastic Prop-sorry-Crystal Skull which felt a whole lot like a man who didn’t want to direct it perhaps James Mangold of Wolverine and Ford V Ferrari fame was a good bet to take the reins but would this deliver or be another false hope like X-Men Dark Phoenix and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.

Well it wasn’t a false hope but its also a movie that on the whole is fine, nothing bad or awful but nothing great either, Harrison is perfectly fine as Indy this time around but it feels like the film is trying to hide his age a little too much at times and the de-aging done on him for the films prologue set in 1944 is hit and miss, at times it works but other times it looks like a video game.

As for Phoebe Waller-Bridge she is again perfectly fine and is the normal capable woman that these films have though some of her dialogue did bother me at times while Toby Jones was pretty annoying as her father Baz (he really suffers in comparison to Denholm Elliott in Raiders and the Last Crusade) and Ethann Isidore as Teddy kept making me think of Abu the monkey from Aladdin and he is again perfectly fine but nowhere near as good as Ke Huy Quan as Short Round from Temple of Doom.

But there are 2 things that really drag this movie down for me:

- The first of those is Mads Mikkelsen as Voller, frankly not only is he boring to watch as a villain but his character does so little in terms of the storytelling he more often than not feels like a prop for extended chase scenes be it on a train or in a car or on a boat etc etc and Mikkelsen in Casino Royale showed that he could play a memorable villain when given the opportunity but here he’s boring and doesn’t compare to Belloq or Mola Ram or Walter Donovan.

- And secondly and this is regrettable for me to say but its James Mangold’s direction, so much of it is done in close ups and close shots and steady as she goes editing that it again feels flat and lifeless and I know these comparisons to the first 3 films are unfair but I have to go there as those 3 films were Steven Spielberg is his directorial prime making the kinds of films that very few knew how to do back then (only John Carpenter, Ridley Scott and the late great Richard Donner could compare.)

And the action in those films is exhilarating and thrilling and Spielberg showing us what he could do (in fact George Lucas wanted him to direct Return of the Jedi before a bitter fallout with the DGA over Irvin Kershner’s credit placement on Empire Strikes Back saw that scrapped) whereas here Mangold just goes about it slow and steady and it’s fine but not good enough to compare to Spielberg or even Mangold who is a capable director outside of this film.

And lastly I want to mention this because I did think of it while watching the film and that is to me Indiana Jones is like John Rambo, characters who were born out of a specific time and place (Indy the 30s adventure serials and Rambo the Vietnam War) that when you take them out of their respective time periods and put them forwards in time they don’t quite feel the same and that could work with the right care and approach to the story but with both of these characters it doesn’t and perhaps its now time to leave them both well enough alone.

And so that was Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and its fine but nothing remarkable and I want to forget all about it now that I’ve seen it because its just not worth more than a “it’s fine”, 2 out of 5.