Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny 2023
I thought the last Indiana Jones movie was not good. So bad, in fact, that it took fifteen years for them to take another stab at it. The reviews for this movie have not been great, but I still thought it might be worth taking a chance. I'm glad I did and the audience scores are a good bit higher than the critics. This is actually a decent movie, better than the second or fourth installments. You don't want to think too hard about things in this movie, and there are things you could nitpick (the bad guys shoot up all kinds of people around Indiana Jones, but keep him alive? also why not just destroy this thing that could end the world?). But overall I didn't think it was over the top. I think the action sequences support the plot instead of just being big visual spectaculars. Indy's Egyptian friend, Sallah, from the first movie is back, but for no apparent reason. The bad guy is played by Mads Mikkelsen, but he has played the same kind of character in too many big franchises at this point. The movie is set in 1969 and flashes back to World War II, with some pretty decent looking de-aging of Ford and Mikkelsen. To me this is a solid movie, a little long, but it moves along well enough. I looked at my watch with about an hour to go, but that last hour went by quickly. Definitely worth watching.
Written: 12 Jul 2023