Susan Granger’s review of “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” (Disney)
For great family fun, you can’t beat “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” concluding the globe-trotting adventures of the iconic archeologist, a fantastical franchise that began in 1981 with Steven Spielberg’s “Raiders of the Lost Ark.”
This final saga begins in 1944 Germany near the near of W.W. II, as intrepid Dr. Henry ‘Indiana’ Jones Jr. (Harrison Ford) tries to help his close friend/colleague Basil ‘Baz’ Shaw (Toby Jones) save Greek mathematician/inventor Archimedes’ fabled ‘Antikythera’ – a.k.a. Dial of Destiny – a clock-like devise enabling time travel – from a nasty Nazi (Mads Mikkelson).
Skip ahead to 1969 New York, where still surly ‘n’ spry Professor Jones is retiring from university teaching and living alone in a crummy apartment, his marriage to Marion (Karen Allen) having disintegrated after their soldier son was killed.
That’s when Baz’s now-grown daughter Helena (Phoebe Walker-Bridge), who’s defiantly selling relics on the black market, again involves Indy in pursuit of this remarkable artifact, igniting a terrific chase with Indy on horseback, galloping into the subway in the middle of a street parade celebrating the Moon landing amid Vietnam War protestors.
Written by Jez Butterworth, John Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and director James Mangold, it’s an edgy, exotic if erratic, action-adventure, coming to a surprisingly satisfying conclusion, nostalgically scored by John Williams.
So how did they digitally de-age Indy for the flashback? Harrison Ford explains, “That’s really my face. It’s not Photoshop magic. That’s what I looked like 35 years ago. Lucasfilm has every frame of film we’ve made together over all these years; the scientific mining of this library was very skillfully put to good use.”
“This is the final film in the series and the last time I’ll play that character,” whip-cracking Ford notes. “And I anticipate that it will be the last that that he appears in a film.”
On the Granger Gauge of 1 to 10, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is an exciting, escapist 8, playing in theaters.
