Directed by James Mangold. Written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and James Mangold.
The thing about movies like Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, another installment in a franchise that began 42 years ago, is they want to turn back the clock. Studio heads want to cash in on generations of fans’ love for beloved characters and the creative forces look to recapture yesteryear with another hurrah that doesn’t feel like an echo. Even in the film itself, Indiana Jones looks back longingly.
Harrison Ford returns and the role looks good on him still, but the same can’t be said for Indy. He’s living alone since his wife, Marion Ravenwood, is divorcing him. He’s alcoholized in bachelorhood, teaching to disinterested students in a world obsessed with space now three American men have walked on the moon. It’s 1969, and the world doesn’t care for relics anymore. How he wishes he could go back to what was.
Movie’s not in a rush to let go of the past, however. It movie opens with a long sequence set at the fall of Nazi Germany where the Nazis are scrambling to pillage treasures and Indy’s there to stop them. One officer (Mads Mikkelsen, eely in his subservience to more senior Nazis but with a dangerous desperation to him) has got hold of one half of a clock said to be made by Archimedes himself, but by the end of a thrilling train chase, it’s in the hands of Indy and his accomplice Basil Shaw (Toby Jones, funny and touching).
Cut back to 1969: the salvaged clock’s tucked away in a drawer after its importance drove Basil mad, and his daughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge, a spark plug performance whose whip smart delivery is a delight next to Ford’s gruff mumbling) appears out of nowhere to quiz Indy about it, because she thinks she knows where the other half is. Just as your ears perk up and you start to envision them setting off on a grand adventure, Helena pulls a fast one on the old man, scampering off with the clock intending to auction it (!?), and worse, that same Nazi baddie Indy bested back in the 40s returns with a group of thugs to do his bidding.
So begins a chase across the globe filled with shootouts, chase scenes, and crashing structures natural and man-made – everything you’d expect from an Indiana Jones adventure. It’s exciting, the globetrotting gives you a taste of wanderlust, but the real takeaway here is a vintage Ford performance.
Because Indy’s not a drunken mess because his work has lost its luster. He’s a ruin of a man himself, without the love of his life and his son, who he reveals went off to Vietnam and died. The grief consumed Marion, and Indy, helpless to change anything, had to watch as they drifted apart. The scene is incredible, and to watch Ford let his guard down like this is like watching your hardened grandfather crumble in front of your eyes. Forget dastardly Nazi schemes of world domination, there’s something, or someone, at stake right here.
The adventure and Ford justifies The Dial of Destiny, but as much as the movie’s trying to be a throwback, it’s also a sign of the times.
Ford is 81 and Phoebe Waller-Bridge is not an action hero, and to bridge the gap, Mangold unrolls a CGI safety blanket that covers pretty much the entirety of the film’s action sequences and it removes some of the nerve. The eye cannot be deceived (yet), and what’s worse, CGI’s ability to conjure just about anything means the carnage is all the greater now, stretching the suspension of disbelief beyond what it’s capable of.
I think it’s the duty of action-adventure movies to be over-the-top and I’ll indulge anything that’s original (I’m a fan of the nuclear bomb shelter fridge), but when “staple” action elements are done by computers and amped up to earth-wrecking spectacle, it becomes a bridge too far.
Great action movies combine suspense and danger but keep it within reach of our senses. When it works, we can feel the onrushing wind on our faces as Indy wrestles foes on top of a moving train, we can summon the feeling of being struck by flying debris as buildings crumple, or feel the drop in our stomachs as we watch leaps from great heights. Some sequences in Dial of Destiny are so frenzied with action there’s nothing for us to hold onto and so it becomes an overly busy screensaver you just paid money to watch.
Dial of Destiny is not the only film guilty of this, it’s not even the most egregious example, but as a film devoted to nostalgia, it’s all the more telling that there are some modern trends it can’t turn away from.
The performances by Ford and Waller-Bridge reach an impasse with the digital world and it defines Dial of Destiny. As studios increasingly buy into CGI and use it for just about anything instead of letting people take center stage, the early Indiana Jones movies are threatened by the possibility of ending up like the dusty relics Indy chases. Who’s going to save them?
Mikkel Frederiksen 