2023-06-25 20:37:35
by Paolo Mereghetti
Unexpected ending in the fifth chapter of the saga with the octogenarian Harrison Ford
“I hear you’re back, Indiana.” The joke comes at the end of the two and a half hour film but perfectly sums up the spirit of this fifth adventure of cinema’s most popular archaeologist. Fifteen years have passed since we last saw him on the screen (“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”, 2008) and the astonishment at the news of his return is also justified by chronological reasons: Harrison Ford, his irreplaceable protagonist, he is 80 years old and certain breathtaking races seem rather complicated to do again. Right then to wonder if he’s really back, but perfectly right to answer: “Yes, he’s really back” and this Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is worth the price of the ticket.
At the beginning, as in the best tradition of adventure blockbusters (starting with 007) the super-spectacular prologue, between bombs, motorbike chases and clashes on the roof of a train, raises fears of an excessive invasion of digital technology: set in 1945, at the end of the Second World War, we see forty-year-old Indiana fighting against the Nazis who are taking away the fruits of their raids, starting with the middle of a mechanism invented by Archimedes (the «antikytera machine», the dial of the title) which seems to be very dear to Dr. Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), charged by the Reich to stockpile antiques. Together with the trusty Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), Jones naturally manages to get the better of: the Nazis and the credibility because for these scenes the de-aging procedure that we had seen at work in «The Irishman» was not used. No, scenes with Ford in the previous films have been recovered, then the body and expressions have been “pasted” onto the new frames, thus obtaining a surprising rejuvenation because it is “real” (capable of justifying runs, jumps and tumbles).
Then, after the initial minutes (and a brief explanatory parenthesis with Basil), Indiana no longer hides his age. Indeed, it almost seems that Harrison Ford, well beyond the numerous underlinings of the inexorable passing of time, is pleased to show signs of it: we are in New York, in 1969, on the day when the moon landing is celebrated with a large parade his alarm clock is absolutely far from that of a modern super-hero. But precisely that parade will become the backdrop for the first of the many “quotes” from the previous films.
To unleash a surprising ride between majorettes and allegorical floats are the men of the revived Dr. Voller (who is mentioned in passing as one of the fathers of the rocket that took astronauts to the moon, to recall the use of German scientists – and former Nazis – in postwar America). His thugs, who are very quick, want to take possession of the antikytera machine, which we discover is half of a kind of clock invented by Archimedes capable of identifying temporal holes and which Voller wants to reconstruct in its entirety. But before them came Shaw’s daughter, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), who is also interested in the same “dial” but with far more base purposes: she wants to sell it at an illegal auction in Morocco. And Indiana is forced to pursue her.
At this point, the film takes the traditional step of the previous ones, jumping from Morocco to the Aegean Sea (with an appearance by Antonio Banderas) to Archimedes’ Sicily, with the inevitable presence of a boy co-star, Teddy (Erhann Isidore), a partner in business of Helena, with which it is hoped to conquer that slice of public too young to already be fans of Indiana Jones.
Chases, fistfights, sudden reversals up to a finale that is really the twist you don’t expect (the screenplay is by Jez and John-Henry Butterworth with David Koepp) while the direction of James Mangold takes care not to make you regret the Spielberg’s absence. And he more or less succeeds, above all thanks to the slightly melancholy but still irresistible smile of a truly stainless Harrison Ford.
June 25, 2023 (change June 25, 2023 | 20:37)
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