BASICALLY… Indiana Jones is pulled into one final adventure, tied to an escapade in 1945 Germany, but finds that there’s an awful tension between holding on and letting go–and not much time to choose what to do.
In Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Indy (Harrison Ford) is up to his neck in trouble. Captured by Nazis at an archaeological site, he fights to retrieve an artifact from Dr. Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) with old buddy Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) by his side.
Fast forward to 1969. Indy is retiring from a teaching post in New York City. He’s long since given up being “Indiana” in favor of his birth name–Henry Walton Jones, Jr.–and he lives in a cluttered, messy one-bedroom apartment above hard-partying beatniks. He teaches a last class where not a single student pays attention, receives a clock for a retirement present, and is expecting nothing when trouble finds him. Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), daughter of Basil, needs his help tracking down the artifact he secured–because apparently there are powerful, evil forces seeking it as well.
The artifact is known as the Antikythera; constructed by Archimedes, it is supposed to have power over time itself. And it turns out that Voller, who as “Dr. Schmidt” helped land men on the moon, is now interested in conquering time. Indy knows that an obsession with the device destroyed his friend Basil’s sanity, so he fears the same may take Helena, but it turns out she has a different agenda entirely… and even help from Indy’s old friend Sallah (John Rhys-Davies) might not be enough this time.
Chasing her to Morocco, Indy and Helena form an uneasy alliance to seek the device’s other half and keep it out of Voller’s hands. They race across the Mediterranean, seeking clues in Greece. They find the other piece lies underwater and must get help from Renaldo (Antonio Banderas), an expert diver. But when the device is reassembled, nothing goes as planned.
Ford takes a final swing at his second-most iconic character in this fifth installment of the series. After an extended prologue set in 1945, our first glimpse of him in 1969 is as a cranky old man, shirtless and wearing only boxers–which gives us an unvarnished view of a heroic figure who is truly *old*. Ford doesn’t hide his age behind camera tricks, nor do we see Indy doing things that would be impossible at half his age. Director/screenwriter James Mangold shows us an Indy who is long past his prime but still able to summon up the heroism of his younger years. (Yes, he uses the whip more than once, he rides a horse, he shoots his pistol a few times. Even so, he takes a much rougher beating than usual and the audience justly wonders if he’ll endure it.)
Phoebe Waller-Bridge, meanwhile, is a more complex and layered female companion than we’ve had with Indy previously. She has a lot of anger to work through, her brilliant mind a good couple steps ahead of Indy, and yet there’s innate decency too. She provides a sharp foil to Indy’s more black-and-white ethos, even as Voller is the unalloyed darkness they both oppose. Mikkelsen is a terrific villain here, building nicely on a career notable for villainous portrayals, and Voller’s casual cruelty, racism, and vicious contempt for others inflects his performance step by step. He’s a long step ahead of antagonists like Mola Ram or Walter Donovan; he’s actually dangerous and memorable.
The underlying theme (in this reviewer’s opinion) is the tension between letting go and holding on. Indy is having trouble with both. He has had to let go of so much, he feels there’s nothing left onto which he’s holding. And the passage of time has only taken, while he tried to make sense of history–the act of human beings passing through time and becoming meaningful (or meaningless)–and find himself there. It’s a thoughtful meditation on aging, on looking back with regret and pride commingled, and on how the world changes us even as we try to change it… and sometimes, things don’t change regardless.
It’s one heck of a movie and a great way to say farewell to Indiana Jones (for now–c’mon, Lucasfilm isn’t going to let this property lie fallow forever). Harrison Ford can and should take a bow, closing out a franchise that began in 1981 on a bittersweet high note.
