Indi­ana Jones and the Dial of Des­tiny – first-look review

A film about not being able to keep a good Nazi down feels very appo­site in the cur­rent cli­mate of rabid con­ser­vatism, and so that might go some way to jus­ti­fy the exis­tence of a brand new caper involv­ing Nazi-hater in chief, Hen­ry ​“Indi­ana” Jones (Har­ri­son Ford). 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, what we get is the pan­tomim­ic, hubris­tic, goose-step­ping ver­sion of the Nazis, as Mads Mikkelsen’s slight­ed mega­lo­ma­ni­a­cal sci­en­tist Jür­gen Voller plans to use a time-shift­ing doohicky built by Archimedes (no less!) to cor­rect the mis­takes of Nazi high com­mand and make sure that, this time, the Ger­mans are tri­umphant in ​’45.

Fol­low­ing a strange pro­logue in which a (poor­ly) de-aged Ford makes a dash­ing and destruc­tive escape from cap­ture right at the piv­ot point of the war, we scoot for­ward to 1969 and Amer­i­ca is cel­e­brat­ing the Moon land­ings. Our man Voller was brought in to help the Yanks achieve their space race goals, but now his sights are set on retriev­ing the Dial of Des­tiny and see­ing through his fan­tas­ti­cal scheme. 

We then have a James Bond-ified riff on the series, as a wispy-haired Jones is re-intro­duced as an embar­rass­ing washout, a crotch­ety duf­fer whose hat is well and tru­ly hung up. Will he find his mox­ie once more, be roused from his Bour­bon-soaked retire­ment to the path of excit­ing antiq­ui­ty recla­ma­tion? Enter Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Hele­na, spunky daugh­ter to Indy’s old pal who, of course, was obsessed with the Dial but nev­er quite got it togeth­er to con­nect all the dots. Shots are fired, ancient arte­facts are fought over, cars are chased, quips are quipped, and jol­ly well off we go.

The film just about gets a pass­ing grade for not going too heavy on the nos­tal­gia-porn fan ser­vice. There are a cou­ple of old faces, and a few new ones too, but in true adven­ture ser­i­al fash­ion, there’s a sat­is­fy­ing focus on the plot and mov­ing things for­ward as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to the next big action set piece. 

Unfor­tu­nate­ly, much of said action is old hat (pun intend­ed), with the bulk of this strange­ly per­il-free offer­ing play­ing like a refried com­pendi­um of gold­en moments from Spielberg’s orig­i­nal tril­o­gy. There are big Nation­al Trea­sure vibes too, so take from that what you will. It’s hard to muster the same sense of stul­ti­fied awe and nerve-shred­ding ten­sion when Indy and Hele­na are down in a tomb search­ing for clues as to how they over­come the next obsta­cle in front of them, par­tic­u­lar­ly when we’ve seen this scene play out so many times before.

After a shaky start, Waller-Bridge finds her feet to become Indy’s first female help-meet with any real agency (sor­ry Mar­i­on!), and her ener­getic pres­ence means we don’t have to see too many scenes of Ford’s body dou­ble being flung about the place. Yet the film nev­er man­ages to emu­late those skin-tin­gling moments of yore, set­tling for a ser­vice­able and safe runaround where the stakes are not so much high or low as com­plete­ly ridiculous. 

Maybe there will be more of these with dif­fer­ent actors, and bad ideas like this are hard cur­ren­cy in Hol­ly­wood. But def­i­nite­ly feels like the time to take the icon­ic hat and whip, load them into an anony­mous crate and dump them into the archive at the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark.