Archaeologist Indiana Jones races against time to retrieve a legendary artifact that can change the course of history.

The fifth and (surely?!) final movie in the ‘Indiana Jones’ series sees us re-join the iconic archaeologist as he embarks on one final adventure in ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’. Taking place mostly in 1969, we now have an older and mostly wiser Indy who is retiring from teaching on the day of the Moon landings, when he is drawn back into a situation from his past involving an old friend, the Nazis and a feted dial dating back to the time of Archimedes. This is triggered by the arrival of his old friend’s daughter (and Indy’s goddaughter) Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who is soon followed in turn by the CIA and Dr. Jürgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), an old Nazi foe who has his own reasons for wanting to get his hands on the dial.

It begins with a sequence set at the end of WWII as Indy and Basil (Toby Jones, Helena’s father) attempt to escape from Voller and his fellow Nazis with half of Archimedes’ Dial, one of many items the fleeing Nazis are attempting to loot as the war comes to an end. This drives much of the plot which encompasses a cat and mouse chase between Voller, Helena and Indy to retain the existing half of the dial and find the other half, with Voller’s motivation centering on a belief that the dial is capable of altering time, alongside some father/surrogate daughter dynamics between Indy and Helena. Like most modern action movies it traipses across the world with key moments taking place in Morocco, Sicily, the Aegean Sea and the United States (with Glasgow doubling as New York), and it features a series of car chases and fight sequences.

In terms of the performances, Ford may be older but he’s still capable of delivering a memorably pithy line, and even if the action is left up to the stunt doubles these days it is always a good reminder that Jones was written as (and has mostly been) an ordinary guy who has to use his wits as much as his physicality to beat his opponents. Mads Mikkelsen is always a welcome presence and is good casting as a Nazi villain, but I did feel his character was thinly written with a fairly obvious motivation. Phoebe Waller-Bridge borders on annoying, largely as the writers seem to have written Helena around her ‘Fleabag’ persona which is a bit of an odd fit for an Indiana Jones movie. It is a little too long as all blockbusters are these days but I felt it was solid escapism all the same and I didn’t mind the last act, which is of course silly but in keeping with the movie and the series – after all, this franchise did begin with the Act of the Covenant frying Nazis, which I don’t think happened in real life (although it’d have been cool if it did!). Put it this way, it isn’t a ‘Kingdom of the Crystal Skull’ style jump the shark.

I think perhaps the biggest disappointment with ‘Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny’ is that it’s quite an underwhelming finale for one of cinema’s most iconic characters – entertaining in the moment but very forgettable. The video game series (and now movie) ‘Uncharted’ built a franchise around archaeology and adventurism which borrowed heavily from Indiana Jones, but ‘Dial of Destiny’ feels like it’s now the one borrowing and it can’t escape that this is quite a derivative movie. For a character that is such an iconic part of our collective cinematic memories, he deserved a better send off than this.

Rating: 3/5

Directed By: James Mangold

Starring: Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge, Antonio Banderas, Toby Jones, John Rhys-Davies, Boyd Holbrook, Karen Allen, Ethann Isidore and Mads Mikkelsen

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1462764/