Indy’s graceful goodbye
Film critic Jason Evans has made it his mission to tell you everything you need to know about movies in less time than it takes to… well… travel through time. His reviews are exactly 100 words long (99 would be too short, but 101 is just excessive). Here is his 100-word review of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
The Premise: The film starts with a 1944 preamble featuring a de-aged Harrison Ford battling Nazis trying to smuggle stolen artifacts back to Hitler. We then fast forward 35 years and find that the years have not been kind to our favorite archeologist. Indy’s wife, Marion, has left him following the death of their son in the Vietnam War and Indy is facing a lonely retirement from teaching at Hunter College in New York. On the day of his retirement party, he encounters his goddaughter, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who wants to know about an artifact she thinks her crazy father gave Indy many years ago. And Helena isn’t the only one who wants the artifact, she and Indy soon find themselves being chased by murderous thugs working for one of the Nazis Indy fought in 1944. It turns out the artifact is a mathematical device designed by Archimedes… and it may allow whoever has it to travel through time. The film is written and directed by James Mangold (Ford vs. Ferrari and Logan) and also stars Mads Mikkelsen as the Nazi bad guy.
The 100 Words: Nothing will recapture the magic of Raiders,
so don’t go in expecting Dial of Destiny to be legendary… but it is much better
than the last Indy film and, after a few bumps, turns into an enjoyable ride.
The script gets a bit lost in the middle third (“let’s find this, so we can
find that”) but I liked where it ended up and there are some surprises along
the way. Ford gives it his all, Waller-Bridge is refreshing, and Mikkelsen is
one of the better bad guys in Hollywood. A fitting send off for one of
Hollywood’s legendary characters.
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