Star: Harrison Ford

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) – Harrison Ford

This movie gets off to a good start, with intriguing action at a good pace – unfortunately this is let down by the fact it’s mainly in German so you’ll need good subtitles to follow what’s being said.

Harrison Food looks fantastically young in the first 20 minutes, considering he’s about 80 years old here – he could easily pass for 50. He looks younger than his last outing, which was about 15 years prior. So I guess he’s wearing heavy makeup and/or there’s some kind of AI based reverse-ageing filter going on here. After 20 minutes, the scene changes to a later timeframe, and Harrison Ford looks more like his real age now.

The movie then creeps into increasing levels of tedium, until the 80 year old man starts running from a team of armed mercenaries and somehow successfully throws obstacles in their way and evades them for some time. This of course is cringeworthily unconvincing compared to when he was doing it as a much younger man. It’s getting hard to watch now.

New cast members in this movie include Shaunette Renée Wilson who in this movie looks & moves like she could be a daughter of Samuel L Jackson but apparently is not. Maybe her makeup has something to do with it.

An hour into the movie, when 80-year-old Indiana has finished fist-fighting and running around with in-prime mercenaries, we meet a Moroccan gangster so feared that the local police lower their guns and drive off. Then he opens his mouth, and we hear an Eton-schooled politician-style snotty London accent. His accent then gradually sinks into something more foreign & husky, as if we didn’t hear his opening few lines already. Sack the director please. That’s no minor faux pas. And while you’re at it, sack the writer too. Harrison Ford is way too old for this script, he should be far more reserved, and giving some new young gun the opportunity to do the bulk of the running around and fighting. Honestly this movie is like a circus in giving Ford this kind of physical work, and it’s really not necessary – he could be acting a more senior character and doing the physical stuff more sparingly and more realistically without compromising on quality so far as traditional Indiana Jones fans are concerned. After this would-be-scary little chat, Indy then runs away on foot, hobbling along as if he’s got broken ankles or is walking in quicksand, while somehow still out-running cars & motorbikes and dodging bullets too…

Half way through, we’re introduced to a character played by Antonio Banderas in his early 60s. This movie is desperately in need of some young blood.

Ford has a very croaky voice in this movie, as if he’s not got long left to live.

The lead female (with quite an Adam’s Apple) is played rather deviously by Phoebe Waller-Bridge. Her character is fun yet nonchalant, and a bit mischievous, as if she’s just playing a cheeky game while being shot at and everything else. With her big nose, big chin, mischievous unsympathetic gaze and androgynous bony figure, she could make a convincing witch, but a benevolent character is a hard sell for her.

Interesting plot twist towards the end. Fascinating concept and potential for some awesome action, but unfortunately we get pretty much no action from it, only a load of mostly-static drama. As for the very very end, I found myself fast forwarding the last minute of the movie – how bad does a movie have to get for that to happen? It was just a very clearly dead drama scene going nowhere except a bit of friction and cringeworthy affection between two very elderly people.

This has got to be the worst movie in the saga, without question. So much that I’m going to rate it Barely Watchable but not quite on the level of OK like all the others were.

Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981) – Harrison Ford

For two decades this movie was simply named Raiders of the Lost Ark, but it’s also been marketed since the year 2000 as Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark for consistency with other movies in the franchise.

This movie resembles an old-school James Bond movie, with a bit more of a slapstick vibe – several funny moments that might make you laugh for a just second – and an extra focus on archaeology and the occult. It’s not terribly dissimilar in genre to an old Star Wars movie (another franchise that Harrison Ford was involved in) minus of course the interplanetary travel and aliens. This movie also has a lot in common with the Tomb Raider movies although they’re a bit more modern in their action and special effects.

Harrison Ford does well as Indiana Jones aka Indy, the star and eventual namesake of this movie series. There’s no real martial artist vibe about him, but there are plenty of brief fight scenes throughout the movie, including empty handed fighting, edged weapon fighting and gun fighting, plus car chases, ships, planes, etc. The action is constantly ebbing & flowing, and Ford is consistently entertaining – there’s rarely a boring moment in this movie although there are some slightly uncomfortable scenes for those who are not a fan of horror, but to its credit, this movie doesn’t dwell on such moments nearly as much as most movies tend to these days, which makes it a far more digestible experience who those who just want smooth entertainment.

Karen Allen plays Marion Ravenwood, the lead female in this movie. She does a fair job. Doesn’t wow, bit of a chav, but not terribly bad an actress. Kind of matches the slightly slapstick genre and avoids overpowering the lead character or the script, so it kind of works.

Paul Freeman does quite well as Dr. René Belloq, one of the chief antagonists – the guy who always steals Indy’s treasure once he finds it.

Other supporting cast members generally do a decent job. The Nazi troops towards the back end of the movie were quite convincing, as were the indigenous tribesmen near the start.

All in all, I’m going to rate this an OK movie, considering the genre I’m seeking (martial arts packed smooth action hero movies). The action is fluid but the effects are a bit basic by modern movie standards. Still, it was a massive movie in its day, and spawned one of the highest grossing movie sagas of all time.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (1984) – Harrison Ford

There are a couple of prolonged chaotic scenes with awful white-noisy music and sound effects in the first 20 minutes, making the fast-paced action quite irritating at times.

It gets a lot more interesting as the plot thickens about half an hour in.

It gets a bit gruesome for a moment as a pregnant snake is cut open and its babies slither out, while talking about human sacrifice, before serving up decapitated monkey heads for desert. Some people will understand the sick metaphors at work here. Shades of Marina Abramović. Nasty death & fire obsessed cult rituals led by horned men take place about an hour into the movie. There’s really not much archaeology in this one.

Overall though, the movie is not bad, the ending is decent, it didn’t just fade off like so many movies do after starting out well.

Harrison Ford does well as Indiana Jones, the star of the movie; as does his sidekick, an adopted Chinese boy called Short Round, played very well by Ke Huy Quan who almost stole the show!

Kate Capshaw also does alright as the lead female in this movie – her performance was pretty good and her level of appeal was just satisfactory for the role, which may have been the plan so as not to detract from the near slapstick adventure genre, although there’s probably a higher chance that the director Steven Spielberg thoroughly adored her since he eventually married her in 1991.


Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) – Harrison Ford and Sean Connery

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989) is a bad third movie in the series – it’s about equal to the second one (Temple Of Doom, 1984) and has a lot less of the weird occult stuff although there is a strong religious angle to this one.

This time, Harrison Ford (who plays Indiana Jones as well as usual) is joined by Sean Connery (who plays his father) for a good chunk of the movie. Both their performances seem a bit laboured, not as crystal clear as they are when they’re performing at their best, but they still both put in decent work here.

Considering it’s the third of 5 movies in the saga, they’ve done a good job in maintaining a fairly decent standard although the original is probably still the best movie of them all since Harrison Ford is a bit younger there and his age is clearly catching up with him now. This time the movie is set in the WW2 era and is largely based in Germany, while featuring plenty of military personnel with credible accents, mannerisms and uniforms, etc.

This is more of an evolving adventure movie rather than a martial arts movie per say, and is more of a team endeavour than a single action hero job compared to most action hero movies featured on this site, but there’s plenty of fast action scenes including fighting with fists, whips, guns, tanks, planes, etc as you would expect from any Indiana Jones movie.

As with the other Indiana Jones movies so far, there’s a lack of potent female input, although Alison Doody does a fair job as the lead female with minimal screen time. She’s plays Elsa Schneider who keeps jumping back & forth from supporting Indy and his father, to double crossing them, to supporting them again. She’s probably still the third main character in this movie. She’s not unattractive, she’s just a bit basic and isn’t given a substantial role either.

Other supporting cast members do a fairly good job as usual in this series. They include River Phoenix in his late teens, who plays a younger version of Indiana at the start of the movie – he died of an overdose just four years after this movie was released, at the age of only 23. John Rhys-Davies also performs well as Sallah, Indy’s accomplice in the desert.

Some of the best parts of this movie include when Indy bumps into Adolf himself – great comedy there; plus when Indy and his father get on a German zeppelin airship – another outstanding comedy moment there; and when Indy finally meets the immortal guardian of the Holy Grail – that was a cool moment too.

Another nice touch to this movie was its scene in the ancient city of Petra, in Jordan. This place, according to some people (such as Dan Gibson, who has an interesting YouTube channel) was the true home of the religious prophets Ibrahim (Abraham) and Muhammad, and is allegedly still the direction that all the world’s oldest masjid prayer walls point to today. Can anyone prove him wrong? He seems to welcome the challenge.

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008) – Harrison Ford

This is the fourth movie in the series, which was made much later than the others, so here Indy and his girlfriend are quite aged, and they already have a grown son.

I rate this movie as OK, but almost reluctantly, because while it begins quite strongly, the back end is very weak. The first half hour, and even the first whole hour is mostly good with concise entertainment value; but the remainder of the movie is terribly dull, lacking plot and barely changing scene or concept at all. So I rate this movie as OK on the merit of its strong opening, and considering that most movies are not two hours long like this one is; but be warned, the last half of the movie is worthy of a Watchable rating at best – it’s quite untidy and all over the place, and nowhere near as fun as the first half hour which is packed with all kinds of interesting scenes.

If you enjoyed this movie in spite of its shortcomings, you’ll be pleased to know there is yet another sequel, released much later still, called Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023) featuring Antonio Banderas, although the bad news is, that movie is much poorer than than this one.