Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny      2 ½ stars

My tour of the Disney channel brought me back to the fifth and final installment of the classic Indiana Jones adventure movies first created by Steven Spielberg back in 1981: Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. The movie appeared fifteen years after the previous film, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, where Jones (Harrison Ford) did battle with a Russian speaking Kate Blanchett, which I was not impressed by at the time. It’s not Spielberg this time, but James Mangold (A Complete Unknown, Logan, Wolverine) who is running things from the director’s chair for his second Indiana Jones movie. (Yes, he did Crystal Skull too.) Now it’s a nearly eighty-year-old Indy who must battle the bad guys while trying to recover a valuable ancient artifact, in 1969 New York City. But before all that we must travel back to the closing days of World War II when the younger Indy (thanks to the magic of de-aging special effects) was escaping from the Nazis and fighting to keep one half of the Antikythera or Archimedes’ Dial out of the hands of the evil Professor Jurgen Voller (Mads Mikkelsen (Another Round)), who believes it has time travel properties and that he can use it to change the outcome of the war. We get all the trademark scenes that the Indiana Jones movies are known for: the chase scenes at a breakneck pace and the narrow escapes as Indy dispatches the enemies, one by one. But then back in 1969, Jones is approached by Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Fleabag)), Indy’s goddaughter. She has been studying the circumstances of her father, Basil, and Indy’s encounter with the Nazis and thinks she has an idea of where the two halves of Archimedes’ Dial may be. But as things go before Indy can agree or not agree with Helena’s plan, Professor Voller, who has survived the war, appears and together with his former Nazi henchmen try to acquire the dial for themselves and get rid of Indy. So, it’s off to another wild chase, this one through the streets of New York (with Indy on horseback), in the middle of a parade that is honoring the three Apollo 11 astronauts who have returned from the first moon landing. And there also happen to be war protesters to add to the mayhem. But this is just the beginning. The adventure continues in places like Tangiers, Greece and Sicily, as Indy and Helena try to stay a step ahead of their Nazi pursuers, always with the obligatory fight scenes and imminent danger. And as usual, there is the required reference to Indy’s fear of snakes. Ultimately, we find out just what powers the dial does possess and they may not be what these villains expect. Mangold has incorporated all the elements of an exciting Indiana Jones here, but one cannot escape the feeling that this has all been done before and better. Perhaps it would be better to leave our favorite aging heroes be and just keep their heroic acts and death-defying feats active in our memories.