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SCIENCE FICTION LIBRARY

INDIANA JONES AND THE DIAL OF DESTINY (2023)

Blu-ray. Out Now. Walt Disney.

Cert: 12

Even though I loved the first three Indiana Jones movies, Crystal Skull was so mediocre and silly that I wasn’t holding up much hope for the latest Indy adventure, with a geriatric Harrison Ford. Indiana Jones and the Zimmer Frame of Doom, anyone? Hey, old age comes to us all, if we are lucky, but movies starring old people don’t generally draw in the box office crowds. Even the legendary Clint had to cancel Dirty Old Harry because of political correctness gone mad. But of course we live in an age when everything old can be new again, thanks to AI or CGI or something like that -I’m too old to get it right.

The recent actor’s strike in Hollywood expressed concern about the use of AI in films, and after watching the opening scene of this movie you might be persuaded to join the picket line. We’re back in 1945, the end of the war, when Hitler was in his bunker but still had the balls, well, one at least, to seek salvation in getting his hands on a rare artefact called the Lance of Longingus, which drew Christ’s blood. Seems to me like an extra few squadrons of Messerschmitts might have been more helpful, or an underground tunnel to South America, but hey, we can’t blame Adolf for doing himself in, his interest in psychic powers revealing he would one day be the inspiration for Blakey in On the Buses.

But anyway, the prologue here is like the opening scene of a Bond movie and also kinda like the opening of a Young Indiana Jones show if memory serves correct, because it’s set aboard a runaway train. Indy and a colleague named Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) are in Nazi Germany to reclaim some of the historical artefacts being stolen by the fleeing Nazis. but they are captured and our hero faces being hanged - an event scuppered by a judicious bombing attack.

Escaping capture from a Nazi played by Thomas Kretschmann, Indy boards an train carrying the captured Basil and a Nazi astrophysicist named Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen). Discovering the Lance of Longinus is a fake, Indy and Basil find that the Nazis have stumbled upon half of the Antikythera, or Archimedes’ Dial, an ancient Greek item that could reportedly predict astronomical positions for decades. Can you trust those Greeks though? I’m married to one, and on the fence.

I’ve heard some critics say that the de-aged Harrison Ford in the prologue looks unnatural, but not to me. I could have watched an entire film with him like this and enjoyed it just as much. The only thing I might add is that when we get to the older model Ford it seems more reliable and a better actor. He may have played this role many times over the years but this is no phoned-in performance.

We only get to see the real Ford after a splendidly staged action set-piece where the barrelling train is torn apart by anti-aircraft fire and there’s a rooftop fight where the antagonists have to duck for frequent tunnels.

That’s when The Dial of Destiny jumps to 1969 and we meet an elderly Indiana Jones retiring from his college job and handing his gift clock to a homeless man. Unsure of what comes next because he’s separated from Marion (Karen Allen) after the death of their son in the Vietnam War, he sits in his apartment and mopes around.

No time for dreaming of electric sheep here though, and he’s soon off on an adventure with his goddaughter Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), aka ‘Wombat,’ the daughter of his deceased pal Basil. It seems that Basil wanted Indy to destroy the Archimedes’ Dial, but he didn’t and Helena knows that.

As I said, the year is 1969, and everyone’s celebrating the moon landing. Nazi Voller is partly responsible for the Apollo mission but he’s still obsessed by getting the Hitler band, and the Archimedes Ring back together and he sets his goons on Helena and Indy as the latter retrieves the artefact in question from his store room. This leads to a True Lies horse chase through the subway during a parade, climaxing in a scene that could have come straight from The French Connection if Indy had given his pursuers a cheeky wave.