Well, here we are again! Can it be fifteen years since the last Indiana Jones flick hit cinemas? Holy shit did I receive some hate for my joyful review of that particular entry! Was it a film set apart, not only by time, but by tone, topic and execution? Absolutely! But I personally have always been a 50s B-movie tragic and I love Indiana Jones! So although I had some issues with it, I unapologetically enjoyed it then and still today.
Cut to nearly two decades later, through another gruelling development process, with multiple players coming and going, and even the beard (Spielberg) bowing out, and we arrive at another Indy adventure—purported to be the fifth and final. Harrison Ford, the greatest movie star of the twentieth century, is now in his eighties and this is most definitely the end of his iconic turn as the man in the hat.
DOD starts with a bang, in WW2, with Indy and a new close friend (Toby Jones) battling Nazis. At the end of a spectacular action set-piece, the McGuffin of this adventure, a part of an ancient dial (rumoured to be very dangerous) is acquired and the bad guys are thwarted. We then cut to the 1960s, where upon a world-weathered Dr. Jones is on the verge of retirement. In one of his classes a rather precocious (seems weird calling a thirty year-old precocious but that’s exactly how she acts!) student (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) reintroduces herself as Indy’s goddaughter, the only child of that friend Indy saved in WW2. Seems she has taken up Dr. Jones’s interest in archaeology as well as her father’s obsession in the dial they recovered back in the day. Only, shock horror, she isn’t on the level and uses Indy to attain the piece for cash money! Our favourite bad guys, the Nazis, including the one who survived Indy’s attack in WW2 (Mads Mikkelsen) are hot on the trail to find all the pieces necessary to reassemble the dial and change history.
The good: This film wastes no time in getting a fast-paced adventure cracking along. Here we are treated to an Indiana still in his prime and this feels immediately like the original trilogy of films. This works the way River Phoenix’s prologue worked in The Last Crusade. You are 100% taken back to that feeling and, but for a few split second shots, the de-aging thing works very well. Ford’s 80 year-old gravelly voice is less successful in these scenes but certainly not jarring. You also get the requisite Indy elements: ancient tombs, creepy crawlies, booby traps and puzzle solving. Ford has moments throughout, both humorous and melancholic, where he really delivers fantastic performances. Some of the support characters: Waller-Bridge, despite some already rolling their eyes at her character’s personality from the trailer, is not a perfect female character who saves the day at every moment. She’s layered, at times interesting but also at times inconsistent. Toby Jones was also a better newer support character than TKOTCS characters.
The bad or just average: The script is all over the place, probably a hodgepodge of many contributors, that doesn’t cohere pacing and characterisation at all. Indiana especially is one moment leaping up onto a horse and racing through a subway, then a short time later lamenting his age and physical capabilities in a self-deprecating joke that doesn’t land at all. There were infinitely better ways to do this and, as the sequences play out, it hammers home how incoherent these moments blend into being. I can’t say what the most head scratching moment for the character is, as it would spoil the movie, but what I will say is that Indiana is an intelligent, principled man who would never put himself before others. A decision he makes toward the end of the film is NOT what Indiana would think or say or even entertain. The bad guys, even the fantastic Mikkelsen, are just okay. Mikkelsen’s lead Nazi is Toht light for me. He has younger, physically distinct henchmen, but they’re not memorable. Then there is Phoebe’s sidekick, Teddy—utterly implausible character for his age with more skills than a Swiss Army knife. The film is too busy with forgettable or filler characters instead of utilising legacy characters or keeping the focus on Indiana and Phoebe. My final gripe is token appearances of legacy characters who (once again, I won’t go into detail for the sake of spoilers) deserve more than bookend appearances and would have made this last adventure so much more poignant if used for more.
Mangold is no stranger to directing action movies and, for the most part, delivers a movie that visually equals Spielberg’s KOTCS, but as with the beard last run at this, Indiana Jones movies are better with a less is more approach. There is an overuse of CGI that plants it very much in the 21st century, as far as sweeping scaled up shots, that diminishes the film’s intimacy.
Then there’s John Williams’ score. I want to beat myself with a hose for this next sentence, as I adore almost everything the man has ever written. It’s lifeless, forgettable and not in the same league as everything else from this series. I can’t remember a single moment in this entire film where the music sells it.
There is enough in this film to warrant a rewatch or two. There is enough in it (barely) that is definitive Indiana Jones. It’s bittersweet to see our hero at the end of his adventures and, for me, it isn’t worthy of him. Some things they got right, but when they don’t, man do they miss by a mile. I’m glad Harrison Ford got one more go around, I just had a more poignant, more upbeat send off than this in my expectation. Sadly it didn’t meet mine.
MPAA Rating: PG-13.
Runtime: 154 mins
Director: James Mangold
Writer: Jez Butterworth; John-Henry Butterworth; David Koepp
Cast: Harrison Ford; Phoebe Waller-Bridge; Antonio Banderas
Genre: Adventure | Action
Tagline:
Memorable Movie Quote: "I don't believe in magic. But a few times in my life, I've seen things. Things I can't explain. And I've come to believe it's not so much about what you believe,it's how hard you believe it."
Theatrical Distributor: Walt Disney Studio Motion Pictures
Official Site:
Release Date: June 30, 2023
DVD/Blu-ray Release Date:
Synopsis: Archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary artifact that can change the course of history.
