Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023): Harrison Ford Needs Ibuprofen
You waited sixteen years for Harrison Ford to pick up the whip again, and honestly, the first thirty minutes had me convinced this was going to be the apology letter we deserved. Then something happened around the halfway mark that made me want to throw my popcorn at the screen, and we need to talk about it.
The de-aging tech in that opening sequence is genuinely impressive, giving us a 1944 Ford who moves like the guy we remember from Raiders. Mads Mikkelsen chews scenery as a Nazi scientist, and Phoebe Waller-Bridge brings chaotic energy as Helena, Indy's goddaughter with questionable morals and excellent comedic timing. But here is the thing. Director James Mangold keeps stacking action sequences like he is terrified you will get bored. Car chases, tuk-tuk races, underwater dives. It is exhausting. And somewhere beneath all that noise, there is a surprisingly melancholy story about aging and regret that the film seems almost embarrassed to tell.
What Is It About
The premise sells you on a race to find the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient device supposedly designed by Archimedes himself. Standard treasure hunt stuff, exactly what you signed up for. Then the third act takes a swing so wild it will either make you stand up cheering or walk out muttering obscenities. I genuinely cannot tell you which camp you will fall into. What I can tell you is that the film makes a choice here that redefines everything you thought this story was about.
Plot Holes and Things That Make No Sense
Okay so Helena spends the whole movie established as a selfish grifter who would sell her own grandmother for a payday, then suddenly becomes ride or die loyal in the final act because the script needs her to be. No buildup, no earned moment, just vibes. And Voller somehow tracks Indy across three continents with zero explanation, like he has got a GPS chip in that fedora. The timeline of getting from Sicily to Syracuse is pure fantasy, they cover ground faster than a commercial flight while being chased by assassins. Also the military just lets an elderly archaeology professor keep classified mission details about Operation Paperclip sitting around in his apartment? The FBI would like a word. But my personal favorite is how the Antikythera works perfectly after two thousand years underwater. Archimedes really built different I guess.
The Good, The Bad, The Honest
John Williams, at 91 years old, delivers a score that genuinely earns its emotional moments, weaving the iconic theme with new melancholy motifs that hit harder than they have any right to. Ford commits fully to playing Indy as broken and tired, and there is real pathos in watching him confront mortality. However. The action editing is a mess. Cuts come so fast you lose spatial awareness. Waller-Bridge deserves better material than quippy one-liners that land maybe half the time. Antonio Banderas shows up for exactly seven minutes, dies, and you feel nothing. Mangold wanted prestige and spectacle simultaneously. He got neither fully.
Cast and Direction
Ford carries this film on his back like he is hauling the Ark itself. The man is 80 and still selling every punch and pratfall. Mangold directs like someone terrified of silence, cramming every frame with noise and movement. Waller-Bridge is working overtime to make underwritten banter feel spontaneous. She almost pulls it off.
How It Ends
The Antikythera opens a time fissure that drops Indy and Helena directly into the Siege of Syracuse in 212 BC. Yes, actual time travel. They meet Archimedes himself, and Indy, exhausted by grief and modern life, decides he wants to stay and die in the past. Helena punches him unconscious and drags him home. The final scene has Marion walking back into his apartment, reconciliation implied. Does the film earn this? Barely. The time travel feels like a cheat because the movie spends two hours as a grounded adventure before suddenly going full science fiction. The Marion reunion lands emotionally, but only because Ford sells the loneliness so completely. The mechanism works on its own terms, the dial finds fissures in time, but nothing before the third act prepares you for that leap.
The Verdict
The single best thing this movie does is let Indiana Jones feel genuine despair, something the franchise never had the guts to explore before. Final verdict: a flawed, overstuffed sendoff that works better as an elegy than an adventure. Skip it and you miss Harrison Ford giving a character he has played for forty years the one thing sequels rarely allow, a real goodbye. That counts for something.
Is Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) worth watching?
Yes
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) scores 7.2 out of 10 on SpoilSins, and the one-line verdict is "Yes". Below the SpoilSins median of 7.5: 31% of the 121 films scored here rate lower.
7.2/10 the SpoilSins score
- Released
- 2023
- Genre
- Action-Adventure
- Reviewed by
- Broikos Nikos,
- Scale
- Out of 10, and what that means, against every score on SpoilSins
