Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny belongs in a museum, preferably a sub-basement no one visits

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny

Directed by James Mangold

Written by Jez Butterworth, John-Henry Butterworth, David Koepp and James Mangold

Starring Harrison Ford, Phoebe Waller-Bridge and Mads Mikkelsen

Classification PG; 154 minutes

Opens in theatres June 30

The fifth, and rather improbable, Indiana Jones adventure exists for two reasons. The first, naturally: to make gobs of money, with producers betting that Spielbergian-sparked nostalgia can trump any traumatic memories of crystal skulls, nuclear refrigerators or Shia LaBeouf. The second: to, whenever the time may come, make you feel like the weakest and most pathetic 80-year-old to ever walk the planet.

Everyone will have to wait till opening weekend to deliberate on that first goal, but I can report that Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny scores on the second. I’m half the age of Harrison Ford, and I have no doubt that the man could rip the still-beating heart out of my chest with ease, should he feel the need to do so.

As compelled by the various and sometimes creaky plot mechanics of his new film, the 80-year-old Ford runs, leaps, fights, rides and smooth-talks his way out of so many calamitous encounters that he doesn’t so much defy death as he rudely ignores it. As irascible as he is seemingly immortal, the movie star makes the act of aging into the role of a lifetime.

Yet the film only half-leans into its hero’s mortality, as if director James Mangold (Ford v. Ferrari, Logan) was anxious about asking any big questions – of lacing themes into his theme-park thrills. This might not have mattered if Mangold was series mastermind Steven Spielberg, the undisputed master of shock and aw-shucks. But there is only one Spielberg, so the result is an adventure that sands away the edges of its own taste for danger, with the destination – those gobs of cash – mattering far more than the journey.

At least Dial of Destiny opens with a jolt, as Mangold sets up a dazzling prologue in which a Second World War-era Indy squares off against his favourite foes, the Nazis. De-aging Ford with the help of impressive-slash-terrifying visual effects – the actor looks as young as he did in 1981′s Raiders of the Lost Ark, with no uncanny-valley wonkiness – Mangold executes a 20-minute-long sequence that recalls the highest notes of the franchise, only occasionally playing like a greatest-hits compilation rather than purely new material.

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As Indy attempts to wrest control of an ancient MacGuffin from Nazi commander Voller (Mads Mikkelsen, icy as ever), the only man to ever properly rock a fedora moves swiftly from one set piece to the next: slugfest, gunfight, chase scene set atop a speeding train. The entire extended sequence moves with a smoothly relentless energy that sets audiences up for the kind of breakneck joyride that Raiders delivered – all aided by such radically powerful next-level technology that Indy himself might have deemed it supernatural.

Regrettably, the film’s ambitions dip immediately and considerably once the story flashes forward to 1969. It is an age of future-minded exploration that Mangold tries to contrast against Indy’s golden era of digging in the dirt, but the necessary tension never quite surfaces.

Now divorced from long-time love Marion and no longer the apple of his female students’ eyes, Professor Jones is living a grumpy kind of solitude that only Walter Matthau and Jack Lemmon could relate to. So when his long-lost goddaughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge) arrives seeking help to retrieve the artifact that Voller once desired so many years ago, Indy cannot help but toss his whip back into the ring.

The rest of the film is filled with as many nifty ideas as limp ones, as if no one involved could determine just how much audiences should be enjoying or torturing themselves. This means a dull chase scene through the streets of New York is followed by a decently staged sequence in which duelling tuk-tuks are battling on the streets of Tangier. And for every interesting character who is introduced (such as Shaunette Renée Wilson’s FBI agent), a dud must too appear (there is absolutely nothing to Boyd Holbrook’s Nazi lapdog).

The addition of Waller-Bridge to the cast is curious. It is clear that the acerbic Fleabag star is meant to be the antidote to whatever it was that Spielberg thought LaBeouf’s junior adventurer brought to the Indy mythos. But in practice the actress contributes little of value, arguably becoming more of a liability than a secret weapon. She quietly deflates any rat-a-tat banter that the film’s many screenwriters think they’re injecting into the proceedings, and instantly imbalances any chemistry Helena is supposed to have with Indy.

Once the pair engage in some Temple of Doom cosplay – in which the real-deal bugs of the past have been substituted by CGI creepy crawlies – the Helena/Indy relationship is so clearly flat that it’s enough to make you wish producers bypassed Waller-Bridge to instead engineer a reunion with Ke Huy Quan’s Short Round. (No such bad luck, though we do get a Short Round facsimile in Ethann Isidore’s young thief, Teddy.)

Indy purists might take issue with the film’s final stretch, which pushes the fantastical elements of the series to a new, defiantly silly level – although this is a franchise that’s tussled with immortal knights and telepathic aliens, so calm down. But by the time the “oh, huh, really?” moment arrives, no one but the hale and hearty Ford will have any energy to get worked up one way or the other.

Like Indy might himself admonish, Dial of Destiny belongs in a museum. Just tucked away in the sub-basement, not fit for regular exhibition.