Film Review: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is an enjoyable a slice of hokum

Ethann Isidore, Harrison Ford, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge in Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

• Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny
• ★★★★☆

We have had the Ark of the Covenant, Temple of Doom, Last Crusade and Crystal Skull: now, finally, we get Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (12A).

Opening with a satisfying bit of old-fashioned Nazi-bashing, in which the crotchety archaeologist Indiana Jones (a de-aged Harrison Ford) goes leaping about trains and jumping off bridges during WWII, we cut to New York in the late 1960s, where we find a decrepit Indy railing in vain against the Beatles and similar cultural abominations.

Happily for Indy, ex-Nazi rocket scientist Dr Voller (Mads Mikkelsen) is lurking nearby.

Scheming to reassemble two halves of the Dial of Destiny, aka the Antikythera mechanism invented by ancient Greek genius Archimedes, the proto-type computer that, according to legend, is capable of exploiting fissures in time.

Aided and abetted by his goddaughter, Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), and her sidekick, Teddy (Ethann Isidore), Indy embarks on his latest adventure, determined to prevent Voller from restoring the Third Reich.

Written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth and David Koepp, with Crystal Skull director James Mangold at the helm, Dial of Destiny is as enjoyable a slice of hokum as you’ll see at the cinema this year.

It’s Indy’s victory lap, essentially, but one conducted at a furious pace as Indy and Co barrel about the globe via a series of frantic chases in planes, trains and automobiles (and motorcycles and tuk-tuks too), ticking off the old gags (‘Snakes!’) as they go.

Ford is good value for money as the battered old fogey reluctantly swinging into action once more, and if Phoebe Waller-Bridge doesn’t quite convince as a know-it-all ingenue who specialises in double and triple-cross, Mads Mikkelsen is deliciously sinister as the unrepentant Nazi villain.

The last 20 minutes, by the way, are utterly bonkers — if this really is Indy’s last hurrah, they’ve sent him out in considerable style.