In his fifth outing, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, the legendary adventurer has lost a step, not cinematically, but literally, as he grapples with aging and a sense of falling out of sync with the modern world. He’s alone, on the brink of retirement and the cultural excitement of the late 60s and the moon landing is totally lost on him. In many senses of the word, he is a man out of time.
As it turns out, this is welcome news for the franchise. As Indy finds himself drawn back into a globetrotting quest for a long forgotten relic by his estranged goddaughter, James Mangold takes advantage of the opportunity to subvert what we expect of an Indiana Jones adventure. Not so much that the film feels out of place in the larger canon of the series, but it a way that reinforces Indy’s humanity. He’s not immortal nor invulnerable, and much as he did with Logan, Mangold captures the nuances of that last hurrah quite gracefully.
After a sequence relating Indy’s first encounter with the Dial of Destiny, and the film’s big bad, Mads Mikkelsen, during the last gasp of World War II, the film zips ahead to the summer of love where a 70-year-old Indy is settling nicely into his “get off my lawn” era. But add a dash of intrigue from his ambitious goddaughter, Helena, played with Golden Age gumption by Phoebe Waller-Bridge and an encounter with his old Nazi enemy and Indy is right back in the proverbial mix.
What follows is a clever and sweeping adventure that’s mostly fun and more successful than not. Some twists might leave fans scratching their heads, while others will sure illicit a few cheers. A far cry better than past missteps, if not quite as triumphant as The Last Crusade, The Dial of Destiny is an Indiana Jones film that understands how to flip the script without abandoning that which has always worked well in the series: namely, fighting Nazis.
As summer popcorn movies go, The Dial of Destiny is neither exemplary nor regrettable. It’s fun, light-hearted and a fine farewell to one of cinema’s favorite history buffs.