Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) Review

Archaeologist and recently retired professor Indiana Jones must race against time to retrieve a legendary artefact that can change the course of history. This also brings up some history for him personally as well!

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The opening scene is a flashback and that means some of that lovely (ok not lovely but strange) CGI to make our leading actor appear young again. I mean I get why they do this, but it still looks and feels strange doesn’t it! Anyway the scene shows Indiana working with Basil Shaw and attempting to put a stop to the Nazi’s getting their hands on the dial or at least half of the dial that should be! Led by Dr. Voller who wants nothing more than to be able to change history.

Then back to the present day and we see an aged Indiana getting up for his last day of work as a professor and he is being watched by a young woman. This woman turns out to be Helena the daughter of Basil Shaw, and his goddaughter who had not seen for many years. As it turned out she picked up her father’s obsession with the dial and believes she can find where they lost one part and has worked out the location of the second part of it. Together both parts would given unlimited power to the person who held it and the opportunity to travel back in time.

We seem to have hit a time in film when multiverses and time travel are well and truly the top subject to have within the plot. This is no different and it does have some rather interesting ideas and twists along with it, which I will not spoil as you need to just go with it. 

Helena is not very likeable with the path she has chosen and quite frankly offering different discoveries to the highest bidder and a rather sketchy life, although her compassion and caring nature for Teddy shows that she has not fully gone into it all. Indiana as usual is reluctant to get involved but he is not really left with much choice once he is shot at and his former colleagues killed. 

That leads me very nicely into the “bad guys” within the film, Dr Voller has that evil nature going and quite cruel. However, his two henchmen were so utterly boring it was frustrating as soon as they came on screen. One trigger happy and constantly firing and gun, with the other being just a big unit. Can we not have more interesting character now? 

Seeing Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones again was of course a nice thing as it is one of those rather epic film franchises and roles. Even more so though I absolutely loved the return of John Rhys Davis who just looked as though he was having the most fun ever being back in that world and that is something you can at least enjoy about the film. Phoebe Waller-Bridge is a decent addition to it all and it has certainly set everything in motion for her to takeover right?