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

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) Director: James Mangold

“You’ve already lost your son, Dr. Jones. Your wife is gone. Do you really want to lose your godchild? For what? A world that no longer cares about men like us.”

The fifth and (hopefully) final Indiana Jones adventure in this zombie franchise features some classic callbacks to the pulpy character envisioned in the original trilogy –including a remarkable opening scene of a de-aged Harrison Ford battling Nazis in 1944 (though his gruff voice is clearly that of the eighty-year-old actor). He is joined by an old pal named Basil Shaw (Toby Jones). Here, we meet Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), a Nazi scientist who has acquired half of an ancient dial –the mysterious Dial of Destiny which serves as the film’s central Macguffin. It was constructed by Archimedes and it apparently reveals time fissures (Indy and Basil have been chasing after another artifact, a stolen Nazi artifact known as the Lance of Longinus). Following a rollicking chase sequence through a Gothic castle a la The Last Crusade is violently cast off a moving train by young Indiana Jones –yet somehow he survives? Anyway, despite being a cartoonish CGI-fest akin to Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, this opening scene is a nice nod to the original trilogy.

Next, we jump forward in time to 1969 (twenty-five years later) as Indiana Jones is retiring as a professor at Hunter College in New York (apparently, he no longer works as Marshall College). He seems sad and despondent in his old age. What of his wife Marion and son Mutt as explained in the previous film The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull? Indiana Jones’s son, Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), is described as having been killed in the Vietnam War which then caused the break-up of Indy and Marion. Basil has since passed away, but Indy is visited by Basil’s daughter (Indy’s goddaughter) Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) who re-ignites her father’s obsession with the “Dial of Destiny.” A reluctant Indy joins her and they are chased by Voller who Indy has not seen their encounter in the ‘40s during World War II. Voller now works for NASA with the support of the CIA (an interesting transition from avowed Nazi to American intelligence agent).

Amidst public anti-war protests and parades celebrating the Apollo 11 moon landing, we learn that Helena is actually a smuggler intending to sell the dial to the highest bidder on the black market in Tangier –but Indy prevents her because he has always been a defender of the notion that classic antiquities belong in museums. Together, they encounter Indy’s old friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) who is now working as a New York cab driver. Indy is being trailed and wrongly accused of murder while also outflanking Voller, and they are joined by Teddy (Ethann Isidore) as well as an old friend Renaldo (Antonio Banderas) who helps them on a diving mission in the Aegean, before they head off to Sicily and into the “Ear of Dionysus” cavern where the tomb of Archimedes contains the other half of the dial. Curiously, Archimedes has been buried with a 20^th century wristwatch and images of a flaming phoenix and airplane propellers on his ancient tomb.

In the end, Indy is captured by Voller who uses the dial to travel backward in time with the intent of assassinating Hitler in 1939 and thereby become the ruler of Nazi Germany, himself. However, Voller makes a mistake due to the fact that Archimedes could not have known about “continental drift” and a rift in the sky transports them back to the ancient Roman siege of Syracuse in 212 BC wherein their plane is shot down and Archimedes takes Voller’s watch, but Helena and Teddy rescue Indy and bring him back to his New York apartment in 1969 where he is reconciled with Marion (reprised by Karen Allen) while all of his friends check up on him –Helena, Teddy, and Sallah. What about the warrant out for Indy’s arrest for murder? No matter, the film ends on a bittersweet note –and mercifully they did not kill off Indiana Jones, nor did they let Indiana Jones remain in 214 BC to die.     

Unsurprisingly, there are more than a few convenient plot contrivances in this film, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a slightly annoying character –though not as much as I was anticipating—however she is just not believable as an action star. Watching her try to run through various high-octane scenes is a complete joke. Though, of course, the same can be said of octogenarian Harrison Ford who somehow manages to survive for long stretches of this film after being shot. And this is a very long film (about two and a half hours) which features a couple moments of nostalgia-bait like Indiana Jones alluding to the “blood of Kali” and his fear of snakes coming to the fore while diving in eel-ridden waters.

This is also a pretty heavy film with the specter of death looming –several characters are visibly murdered onscreen including Renaldo and also one of Voller’s Nazi henchman named Klaber (Boyd Holbrook) who is handcuffed underwater by Teddy. It lacks much of the superficial silliness of The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, while also lacking the inspiring and somehow more believable worlds featured in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade.

All things considered, The Dial of Destiny was a better farewell for Indy than its pitiful predecessor film, however this series really should have ended with Indy and his friends riding off into the sunset in The Last Crusade. At least, ninety-year-old John Williams’s triumphant score returns once again to save the day!

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• Director: James Mangold
• Screenplay by: Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp, and James Mangold
• Produced by: Kathleen Kennedy, Frank Marshall, and Simon Emanuel
• Starring:
  • Harrison Ford…..Indiana Jones (Ford was 80-years-old when the film was released).
  • Phoebe Waller-Bridge…..Helena Shaw, a smuggler of rare artifacts. She is Indy’s goddaughter and daughter oof Indy’s friend, Basil Shaw.
  • Mads Mikkelsen…..Jürgen Voller, a former Nazi turned NASA scientist.
  • Antonio Banderas…..Renaldo, an old friend of Indy.
  • John Rhys-Davies…..Sallah, a friend of Indiana who now works as a New York cab driver. He previously appeared in Raiders of the Lost Ark and The Last Crusade.
  • Toby Jones…..Basil Shaw, an Oxford professor of archaeology and ally of Indy (Helena’s father).
  • Boyd Holbrook…..Klaber, Voller’s henchman.
  • Ethann Isidore…..Teddy Kumar, Helena’s young sidekick in Tangier.
  • Karen Allen…..Marion Ravenwood, Indy’s estranged wife.
• Cinematography by: Phedon Papamichael
• Edited by: Michael McCusker, Andrew Buckland, and Dirk Westervelt
• Music by: John Williams
• Production Company: Lucasfilm Ltd.
• Distribution Company: Walt Disney Studios
• Other Facts:
  • Back in 1979, George Lucas and Steven Spielberg made a deal with Paramount Pictures for five Indiana Jones films
  • The fifth Indiana Jones film was largely pushed by Harrison Ford, however it was delayed by the Disney acquisition of Lucasfilm, and Kathleen Kennedy’s decision to focus on Star Wars instead. It was then further delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.
  • The Dial of Destiny concept was based on the ancient Greek Antikythera mechanism, which was used to predict astronomical positions and eclipses decades in advance.