Midway through “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” a movie janked up with enough digital effects to rival the Marvel Cinematic Universe movies, Harrison Ford gets on a boat. It’s a nice, contemplative scene on a diving vessel, sailing to Athens and piloted by Antonio Banderas. Indy’s traveling, uneasily, with his goddaughter, Helena, played by generously showcased Phoebe Waller-Bridge, chasing after the Dial of Destiny, which the Nazis are likewise chasing to give this movie a reason for being.
Indy reflects on what’s in his heart regarding his failing marriage, and who he has lost. The star relaxes into this moment. Ford was 79 when he filmed “Dial of Destiny” — he’s 80 now — and he finesses it just so: with gravitas, banked emotion, glancing heartbreak. Before you know it, you’ve forgotten how not-special the first hour of “Dial of Destiny” was. The movie takes a breath, and the second half’s a little better. And that, friends, is what a movie star does for a living.
And just before that unexpectedly effective transition scene on the boat? What do we get as a lead-in? The map! The beloved old-school, on-screen itinerary update, showing where Indy’s been and where he’s going. The Indiana Jones franchise has always loved its map dissolves, that charming remnant of prestige studio pictures but also of the cheaper, grungier, cliffhanging serials Steven Spielberg and George Lucas watched as young boys dreaming of whips, ray guns and plunder.
“Dial of Destiny” marks the fifth and probable final “Indiana Jones” movie with Ford front and center. It’s also the first one — and you can tell, right away — not directed by Spielberg.
Most of “Dial of Destiny” takes place in 1969. We meet Indy living humbly, doggedly, alone in New York City on the brink of retirement from his post at Hunter College. Indy and Marion, estranged for a while now, we learn, teeter around the edges of their divorce paperwork, still unsigned.
The screenplay (with four credited writers) patiently grinds through explanations of what Indy calls the “ancient hunk of gears” everyone’s after. The gears belong to the Antikythera, both miraculously interlocking halves of it; it’s the potential world-changing artifact invented by the ancient Greek mathematician Archimedes, imagined by “Dial of Destiny” to be a predictor of “fissures in time.”
The Nazis we meet in the World War II prologue, led by Mads Mikkelsen as the insinuating chief weasel Jürgen Voller, want that dial to re-wage the war they’re about to lose. All this is in the trailer. The movie feels like a two-and-a-half-hour trailer for a better, two-hour version of itself.
In the early WWII scenes, a digitally de-aged Ford and his comrade in archaeology Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) fight for their lives atop a hurtling train. Here is an example of all the latest technology money can buy, but with an enormous caveat. You’re watching a magically younger Harrison Ford, looking a lot more convincing than, say, a young Robert De Niro in “The Irishman,” but the minute Indy opens his mouth, it’s the sound of a grizzled 79-year-old actor dubbing his former self.
The movie’s full of almost-good scenes, such as the tuk-tuk chase in Tangier (not helped by chatbot-level wisecracks) or an artifact auction wherein Indy wields his whip against his newfound adversaries. One quadrant of the new film’s target audience is being catered to, directly, with the presence of teenage sidekick Teddy, played by Ethann Isidore. You need a kid, obviously, just so Ford can ask at least once: “Where’s the kid?”
The action doesn’t really give you a lift this time around, because we’re in an effects realm of the overwhelmingly digital, not the reassuringly practical, no matter how far-flung the production’s location filming (Scotland, Morocco, Sicily). It’s so easy for action scenes to slip from “incredible,” meaning ridiculous but cool, to “not credible,” meaning not believable and not especially effective. At his cleverest, Spielberg delighted in a blend of old-school and new-school trickery in the earlier Indy movies; “Dial of Destiny” director James Mangold blends various tactics, too, but to lesser effect. CGI makes anything possible, but does not make everything advisable. Or fun.
I did like the leap into pure sci-fi hokum at the climax, about which I’ll keep mum. Indy’s most endearing trait remains his automatic reset to grumbly skepticism with each new movie, even after he’s seen God melt some Nazis, Thuggees performing heart removal and aliens tangling with Cate Blanchett in “Crystal Skull.” Dumb as that movie was, “Crystal Skull” had that terrific motorcycle chase across a college campus, as sharply staged and crisply edited an action scene as Spielberg ever put together. I wish any five minutes of “Dial of Destiny” achieved the same craftsmanship.
Many will enjoy the new film well enough, for the payoff of seeing Ford, the fedora, the bullwhip and the John Williams “Raiders” march theme played one more time. At this point in the life of this ol’ archaeologist, Indy’s theme song has become not just a sound, but practically a sight to behold — even in a movie that isn’t.
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'INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY'
2 stars (out of 4)
MPA rating: PG-13 (for sequences of violence and action, language and smoking)
Running time: 2:34
How to watch: in theaters
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