Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Anyone who gasped at the flying saucer last time may be caught off guard by the end of the fifth Indy, but for me that was perhaps the most interesting part. The film is certainly not bad, but it noticeably and fundamentally lacks the creative contribution of Steven Spielberg. I'm not saying that an Indiana Jones film can't be made by someone other than him, but it probably can't be made by someone unable make it entertaining. Spielberg's vision, imagination, sense of suspense and humour and ability to think through scenes to the smallest detail, James Mangold can’t do any of that (so well). I felt as if he was trying to evoke a Spielberg-like atmosphere mainly in the excellent opening scene (where the digital Indiana Jones, vintage 1944, looks almost flawless, but speaks in a voice decades older), and then not again, or only occasionally and perhaps accidentally. It’s not unwatchable, but it’s not that good either. And the different approach is also evident in the work with John Williams's excellent score, which is an equal partner in Spielberg's films, whereas here it rather supports it. The whole time I was wondering what this film would look like if Spielberg had directed it. Do you remember that less than five-minute scene from Kingdom of the Crystal Skull that starts with a bar fight and turns into a car and motorcycle chase? Well, not a single scene from Dial of Destiny is that good, and that's a shame, because otherwise everything that should be here is here. Harrison Ford still sells every look, every dry line, every emotion, Phoebe Waller-Bridge is charming, Mads Mikkelsen is probably the weakest villain of the series, but the bar was so high. In the end, I think the most important thing is that I want to see Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny again. (06/29/2023)

I've had that famous John Williams tune playing in my head for about two hours now, and not because I enjoyed the fifth Indy so much, but rather because I'm in the mood to watch the first three episodes. I'll never watch the fifth one again, I'm almost certain of that. It’s not a completely bad movie, which could be said of the fourth, but it's just not “it”. The new Indy is carried by Harrison Ford and he's really trying his best, but he's just left on his own and he’s obstructed by everything else. The Fifth Indiana Jones film is visually bland and in some moments regularly repulsive, but mostly it has a boring story full of boring characters, and especially the bad guys are a bunch of uninteresting bums who are impossible to be scared of – Mads Mikkelsen is looking like he's about to start crying the whole time. Moreover, the treasure hunt itself leading up to the very weird (and slightly uglier) finale consists mostly of routine chases, because someone figured they couldn't have an 80-year-old Ford running around the set doing action shenanigans. James Mangold directs it all with no attempt at invention, and the result is at best a passable piece of craftsmanship somewhere on the level of National Treasure: Book of Secrets and a tiny bit above Uncharted, which is definitely not praise for this franchise. It lacks the style, the inventiveness and the evident joy that accompanied the first three films and, to some extent, the fourth. A product without soul. (06/28/2023)

When I think back over the last three months of movies I've seen in the cinema, Indiana Jones comes out as the weakest. Objectively, it might have been worth 3 stars, but I struggled for the first time in a long time and the film failed to engage or captivate me at all. If I look at my watch at least five times in the cinema during a film, I can't give it more than 2 stars. Indiana Jones is not my favorite franchise even though I grew up on it, but I wasn't too pleased with Mangold. The acting is not bad, though Mads Mikkelsen is terribly bland when he's supposed to play the bad guy. Harrison Ford is likeable but didn't entertain me, and I liked Boyd Holbrook but he didn't have much to play here. I didn't enjoy the action scenes, they were digital and lacked pizzazz (the car chase was good though), and when it came to the adventure rides it was one of the highlights (the eel scene was probably the best), but there were only two such scenes in total. The humour was completely absent and I found the plot also quite uninteresting and not very engaging. At home I would probably have turned it off, for me it was an exhausting movie. 4/10. (07/08/2023)

Not great, not terrible. At the start, when we flashback to World War II and a Wehrmacht officer shines a flashlight in the face of a clearly digital Indy, who squints his eyes everywhere but where he's supposed to, it's a bit scary, but thankfully after a few minutes the train (literally) does slowly move forward and we get a few jokes, solid action and imaginative locations. The dogged effort to honor the unique retro-adventure concept of the saga is evident at every turn, but not always entirely necessary or appropriate. Hats off to Ford, who pulls off some incredible stunts for an octogenarian. On the other hand, I believe this film will probably flop in theaters even if Indy stands on its head. Because it's too uninteresting for the young generation, with an uninteresting, generic pulled out of thin air, and the older viewers would rather watch The Last Crusade, which doesn't need try to go back to its roots, because it’s right there. (07/15/2023)

It’s fine that Disney is keeping old dads in mind, even though the mouse lost his shirt on this film. No, it’s not Logan with a whip. Mangold made a safe, old-fashioned movie along familiar lines that is already a bit long in the tooth in the action scenes and, hand on heart, is reminiscent of a conversation with an old man who’s telling you the same old war story for the five hundredth time,  a sure sign of encroaching senility. The pace and gradation fall off after the fine first third and the film thus needs a defibrillator in the form of nostalgia, which fortunately comes so forcefully in the final minutes that the whip regains its crack. And no, I don’t mean that beautiful crisp metaphor of a person who lives from/in the past, but rather that tender scene of two people who are probably hurting all over. I can relate to that! (02/11/2024)