Harrison Ford picks up the famous fedora for the fifth time as Indiana Jones in this respectful and sufficiently entertaining yarn which seeks to put a cap on Ford’s appearances in the franchise.

It’s another globe-trotting, Nazi-punching, treasure seeking adventure which goes through the motions at an impressive lick but never re-captures the magic. This time the now retired professor of archeology is chasing down the Dial of Archimedes, a device which can detect fissures in time.

He’s aided by his god-daughter, played by the enjoyable Phoebe Waller-Bridge, and Ethann Isidore, as a teenage hustler whose role feels created as a market-tested obligation. Mads Mikkelson is wasted as the under-written Nazi scientist who’s also chasing the dial.

James Mangold’s directorial CV has strong moments such as Walk the Line, Logan, and Le Mans ‘66. And he demonstrates vast courage in even attempting follow in Steven Spielberg’s footsteps in the grandmaster’s signature franchise.

To compare Mangold to Spielberg in any other context but this one would be as grossly unfair as comparing the person painting the Forth Bridge to Picasso.

One is doing a fine job in difficult conditions, the other is creating Guernica.

And of course Mangold comes up short, anyone would. The gulf in talent between Spielberg and Mangold is easily demonstrated by their respective treatment of Jones’s hat.

Even in The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, the weakest of the franchise prior to this, Spielberg used Jones’s hat with a deft sleight of hand, introducing it in gorgeous silhouette, and lingering as it waits to be picked up, creating anticipation in the audience our hero is about to appear.

Here Mangold bandies the hat about as luggage, uses it as a punchline to a non-joke, and worse, employs it as a superhero disguise, giving an octogenarian the power to punch people’s lights out.

And speaking of silhouettes, I missed the crispness of Douglas Slocombe’s cinematography of the original trilogy. 

This seemed shot to compensate/accommodate the CGI, which only raises from modern blockbuster passable when impressively de-ageing Ford to his prime, in the lengthy Second World War sequence.

Back in the film’s present of 1969, I understand the now grizzled Jones is frustrated and deeply dissatisfied with life, but he’s never given the opportunity to use his wits, learning, or problem solving ability. 

Think of the tension generated in Raiders of the Lost Ark by watching Jones measure out a bag of sand to balance the weight of a gold idol. Or Sean Connery defeating a plane with his brolly in The Last Crusade.

There are at least four Professors in prime roles in this film, which must be a blockbuster record, yet the film misses the opportunity to allow them to do much with their brains except ladle out exposition. The memorable exception belongs to Waller-Bridge and fair play to her for running with her big moment.

Instead Ford is shuffled from one action sequence to the next where it’s obvious he’s no longer doing any of his own stunt work.

The best stunts in Raiders, such as the truck chase, were based on breathless in-camera stunts from the 1930’s and as such were mostly dialogue free.  And were all the better for it.

‘Cut to the chase’ goes the Hollywood maxim. There’s good reason the saying is not, ‘Cut to the dialogue in the chase’, as this film amply demonstrates.

Here the characters trade barbs while racing tuk tuks, and their dialogue acts as an anchor to the action. The great Hollywood vehicle chases such as those in Bullitt, The French Connection, and any chase from a Mad Max film. All dialogue free.

Was George Miller not available to direct this? Was he not considered? He’s good with a truck chase in a desert.

Bless Mangold for having the cojones to take the hospital pass in following Spielberg.

But with a film crammed with bonkers invention, a great cast and a canvas designed to muse upon life, love & legacy, I should have been far more wildly entertained.

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