“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” debuted in May at the Cannes Film Festival, where it received what could kindly be described as a tepid response from critics.
Based on a recent advanced screening of the fifth and, supposedly, final film in the beloved series dating to 1981’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark,” it’s pretty easy to say “Dial” isn’t some horrendous “Indiana Jones” adventure.It’s as if talented filmmaker James Mangold — taking the reins from franchise director Steven Spielberg — set out to make a convincing forgery of an “Indiana Jones.”
It isn’t simply that this prologue, which introduces us to the film’s villain, then-Nazi officer Jürgen Voller , runs too long. It’s that given all that transpires during it — Indy and an archeologist pal, Basil Shaw , eventually ending up on a speeding train trying to rescue a rare artifact from the Nazis — the sequence should feel more thrilling than it does.
The theory goes that, when reconstructed, Archimedes Dial could be used to locate fissures in time, thereby allowing for time travel. That is why Voller, now a physicist working in the U.S. space program and not bashful about mistakes he feels Nazi leader Adolf Hitler made during World War II, also is desperate to get his hands on it.
Making time a key element to this story helps lean into the inescapable fact that Indiana Jones is no young man. All credit to Ford, now 80, for being able to pull off this seemingly physically demanding performance — it’s somehow believable when Indy mounts a police horse to escape pursuers in the middle of a New York City parade — but this is not the hero at his most compelling.
All the ingredients should add up to a more flavorful film, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” tasting a little too bland a little too often.
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