His work here made me truly hope that he gets a brilliant drama again in his career, the kind he made more often in the ‘80s.īut back to the action/adventure stuff. Ford’s dramatic choices, especially in the film's back half, can be remarkable, reminding one how good he can be with the right material. He could have lazily walked through playing Indy again, but he very clearly asked where this man would be emotionally at this point in his life. The best thing about “The Dial of Destiny” starts here in the emotional undercurrents in Harrison Ford’s performance. An elderly Indiana Jones is retiring from Hunter College, unsure of what comes next in part because he’s separated from Marion after the death of their son Mutt in the Vietnam War. Based on a real Ancient Greek item that could reportedly predict astronomical positions for decades, the dial is given the magical Indy franchise treatment in ways that I won’t spoil other than to say it’s not as explicitly religious as items like the Ark of the Covenant of The Holy Grail other than, as Voller says, it almost makes its owner God.Īfter a cleverly staged sequence involving anti-aircraft fire and dozens of dead Nazis, “The Dial of Destiny” jumps to 1969. Indy escapes capture from a Nazi played by Thomas Kretschmann, but the important introduction here is that of a Nazi astrophysicist named Jurgen Voller (a de-aged Mads Mikkelsen), who discovers that, while looking for something called the Lance of Longinus, the Nazis have stumbled upon half of the Antikythera, or Archimedes’ Dial.

It's a shame, too, because the structure of the prologue is solid. We’re watching Indiana Jones at the end of World War II, but the effects are distracting instead of enhancing. It sets up a standard of over-used effects that are the film’s greatest flaw. He doesn't move or even sound quite right. It’s the first but not the last time in “The Dial of Destiny” in which it feels like you can’t really get your hands on what you’re watching.

Jones looks normal, of course, but Ford here is an uncanny valley occupant, a figure of de-aged CGI that never looks quite human. The unsettling mix of good and bad starts in the first sequence, a flashback to the final days of World War II that features Indy ( Harrison Ford) and a colleague named Basil Shaw ( Toby Jones) trying to reclaim some of the historical artifacts being stolen by the fleeing Nazis.

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