My Cultural Diet

I appreciate the desire of director James Mangold et al. to send out one of cinema’s most iconic heroes in epic fashion. But Dial of Destiny is packed with so much stuff that it drags; adventurous globetrotting has never felt this sluggish. The Indiana Jones movies are famous for their rollicking action (think of Indy hanging onto that Nazi truck for dear life in Raiders of the Lost Ark or Temple of Doom’s mine cart chase), but Dial of Destiny’s major action sequences — a de-aged Indy (which actually looks pretty good) punching Nazis on a train, a tuk-tuk chase through Tangier — just go on and on and on. And on. And on some more. The film is not without delights (e.g., the always-great Mads Mikkelsen, Sallah, Antonio Banderas’ cameo) but it’s true saving grace is, not surprisingly, Harrison Ford. You can tell he wants to do right by Indy, and so he infuses the character with a sorrow that’s quite affecting, such as when Indy asks why he should stay in a world that’s passed him by or when he mourns a friend’s death. It’s just too bad the script also has him utter nonsense like “I’ve come to believe it’s not so much about what you believe, it’s how hard you believe it.” (The last few years of American politics should make it abundantly clear how utterly nonsensical that sentiment is.) Dial of Destiny is better than Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and maybe even Temple of Doom, but it could’ve — and should’ve — been so much better. Indiana Jones deserved as much for his final film.