Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny does something no previous Indy film has done
Harrison Ford is such a pleasure to watch. Indy’s roguish charm, crooked smile and dry sense of humour have nothing to do with his digital de-ageing.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (M)
In cinemas from June 28
★★★½
Indiana Jones runs, jumps, climbs, punches and shoots to escape otherwise certain death about 20 times in the spectacular opening sequence of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
And why shouldn’t he? He looks about 30, is as fit as a mallee bull and knows how to crack a whip, thanks to the impressive digital de-ageing of 80-year-old Harrison Ford.
This old school movie star is such a pleasure to watch. Indy’s roguish charm, crooked smile and dry sense of humour have nothing to do with technology.
“Whatever I did,’’ he says when an attractive thirty-something woman sits next to him in a bar, “I apologise.”
The woman, it turns out, is Helena Shaw, a goddaughter he has not seen since she was a child. Phoebe Waller-Bridge of Fleabag fame is terrific in this devil-may-care role. If we ever need a female Indiana Jones, here she is.
“Indiana Jones is back in the saddle,” she tells him once they are reacquainted. Soon afterwards, in a moment characteristic of the self-aware humour of the script, Indy is racing a police horse through the New York subway. It’s a marvellous scene.
But that happens in the future. The past, present and future are central to this fifth and final – so we are told – instalment in the Indiana Jones series that started in 1981.
It is the first without Steven Spielberg in the director’s chair. As step-directors go, James Mangold (Copland, Walk the Line, Logan, Ford v Ferrari) is more than a safe pair of hands.
The action opens in the past. It is 1944 and the adventurer archaeologist is in occupied Europe attempting to liberate antiquities stolen by the Nazis. He’s accompanied by his colleague Basil Shaw (Toby Jones), father of Helena.
He meets, without delight, Nazi physicist Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen). They initially fight over the lance used to spear Jesus but soon switch their attention to a mechanical clocklike device made by Archimedes.
The Greek mathematician separated the device into two parts and hid one of them, for good reason. Anyone able to find each part and join them will, says Dr Voller, be “not emperor, king or fuhrer. He will be god”.
The physical dispute between the two brainiacs reaches its peak on top of a speeding train, at which point the music of five-time Oscar winner John Williams hits a crescendo.
The cinematography (Phedon Papamichael, a regular collaborator with Mangold) is edge-of-seat thrilling. On its own, this opening sequence, of about 25 minutes, is a four-star film.
The whole film, though, is overlong at 154 minutes and there are lulls that drain its dramatic focus. Part of the reason for the length is the understandable desire to have some fun with previous “Indy moments”, such as his fear of snakes.
After that opening we move to 1969. Dr Jones is living in New York and his young neighbours are blasting out The Beatles. American astronauts have walked on the moon, partly thanks to the work of an immigrant formerly known as Dr Voller.
And so we have the main plot line. Dr Voller is still in pursuit of Archimedes’ device.
So is Helena Shaw, who has followed her father into archaeology, but for more entrepreneurial reasons. So is Indy. Each has their own particular motivations.
Dr Voller’s reason is enough to unite godfather and goddaughter to try to stop him. He believes the device can alter time. It will be a dial of destiny, as the title suggests.
His final plan, when he reveals it, is expected then unexpected. Here’s a hint. “You didn’t win the war,” he tells Indy. “Hitler lost it.”
This movie might be seen as all of its predecessors wrapped into one big burst of entertainment with nice touches of nostalgia.
However, it also does something that no previous Indiana Jones film has done. This comes with the climactic sequence, which is ridiculously silly, but in an enjoyable way.
There is a this-is-the-end approach when it comes to the fate of some of the main characters. It’s worth remembering that Ford’s other brand name character, Han Solo, was killed off in Star Wars Episode VII.
Helena tells her godfather he should “go out with a bang”. There are lots of bangs in this two-plus hours of pure entertainment. Whether one of them hits Indy is something that only time will tell.
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The Cape (M)
Stan
★★★½
If you need to convince visitors from overseas that Australia is a different country, show them the gripping true crime documentary The Cape, which is set in the far, far north.
Here are some of the observations that locals, including Bob Katter, the member for the federal Queensland seat of Kennedy, make in the mood-setting introduction.
“If you don’t have three fights in the pub, the pub was closed.”
“The police may as well not be here. They don’t exist.”
“It’s a nightmare within a nightmare.”
“This leads to people killing each other, which is not an uncommon event.” (That’s from Katter).
And then, “It’s dead man’s country.”
“There’s no doubt that this was a stain upon our soul.”
“He was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.”
“He” is 10-year-old Brad Simmonds.
The time is June 2003 and the spot is the mouth of the Coleman River on the Cape York Peninsula.
Brad and his 36-year-old professional fisherman dad Bevin are out in a five-metre dinghy to inspect their shark nets. There is a lot of money in catching sharks.
They have not been seen since. Nor has the dinghy. Their disappearance without trace is one of Queensland’s most notorious cold cases.
Twenty years on, this documentary, co-directed by Australian journalist Michael Ware and his American counterpart Justine A. Rosenthal, is an attempt to reopen it.
Ware and Rosenthal worked together on the 2015 Iraq War documentary Only The Dead, which detailed Ware’s experiences as a war reporter for CNN and Time magazine. That movie was nominated for an Emmy and won a Walkley.
Their new film has the pull of a page-turning crime novel – and it’s real, not fiction.
As another local comments, “You can’t write this shit.”
It is the story of two rival fishing families: the Wards and – this name does belong in a crime novel – the Gaters and an outsider who marries into one of them. Bevin Simmonds marries Cathy Ward and they have three children.
Then there is a love triangle: Cathy becomes involved with Michael Gater, who dislikes Bevin.
What unfolds is compelling viewing.
As I watched the film what came to mind was John Boorman’s Deliverance (1972), based on the novel by James Dickey. The Cape cinematographer Eric Murray Lui, who hails from the Torres Strait Islands, puts the murky mangroves to maximum effect. Perhaps with an overseas audience in mind, there are frequent shots of crocodiles, with the implied suggestion that here’s one way dead bodies may never be found.
Some of the main participants are interviewed, including Cathy Simmonds and her mother Beth Ward. Michael Gater and his mother Joan do not take part. The two mothers, Beth and Joan, are the matriarchs of their fishing dynasties.
Bevin’s blood relatives are interviewed and their stories are moving. Two decades on and they still have tears and no answers.
The now-retired Cairns detective who headed the investigation, Ed Kinbacher, is clear about what he think happened. He repeatedly refers to a “third party involvement”.
Kinbacher did press double homicide charges. Yet as mentioned at the outset, the case remains unsolved. A plaque erected in the memory of Bevin and his son lists them as “Adrift at sea”.
This is a chilling film set in a part of Australia that most of us know little about, a starkly beautiful, wild, remote frontier that goes well beyond, as a local puts it, “where the bitumen stops”.