“Indiana Jones and the Call of Fate” Review: A Respectable but Underwhelming Farewell to Indy

The good news is that it is not a disaster. It is a respectable and competent new chapter of the series. The bad news is that a mess could have been more worth it.

“Indiana Jones and the Call of Fate” takes a sudden, bold, and sure to be controversial turn into uncharted and crazy territory in its final half hour, but otherwise it’s like a play fanfictiona video game or a ride in a theme park of the franchisein that it’s content to include references to everything you’ve already seen in other Indiana Jones movies, but with little Spielberg sparkle.

The feeling that it’s not as exciting as you expected comes over you during a prologue set in the last days of World War II. Indy and his friend Basil (Toby Jones) are trying to stop the beleaguered Nazis from retreating to Berlin with a trainload of looted antiquities, including a contraption built by Archimedes.

Bearing a clear resemblance to the alethiometer from “The Golden Compass” (Philip Pullman’s film, starring Nicole Kidman and Daniel Craig), this sci-fi instrument not only uses mathematics to predict storms and earthquakes, but also “fissures in time”, which is why also a Nazi physicist, Voller (Mads Mikkelsen, playing the Eurovillain role that suits him so well), is eager to get his hands on it.

Speaking of “rifts in time”, Ford has been digitally aged to have the smoother face and thick brown hair that he had in “Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark“but this digital trick ends up conveying the feeling of someone who is not quite real.

In fact, this overly long prologue not only harkens back to the train scene at the beginning of “Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade,” but is reminiscent of Spielberg’s Tintin animation, in that even though the exhausts last minute are theoretically exciting, in these cases they are obviously too bogus to get the pulse racing.

What’s worse is that when the film jumps to 1969, the charged unreality of the CGI persists. Indy is now about to retire from a daunting teaching job in New York. There is no sign of the wife and child he had at the end of “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and overall he appears to be a relic similar to the ones he usually unearths.

But then his goddaughter, Basil’s affable archaeologist daughter Helena (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), shows up to ask him about Archimedean contraptionwhich has been missing for decades and has been split into two pieces, increasing the search possibilities.

Of course, Helena isn’t the only person on her trail. Voller is alive and well and has been working for the US government, so soon the good guys and the bad guys are after each other through the usual caverns, temples and dusty markets of the Mediterranean basin.

Using the whip sadly

Like another of Ford’s so-called “legacy sequels,” “Star Wars: The Force Awakens,” this one brings back old characters (John Rhys-Davies’ Sallah has a nonsensical cameo), introduces new ones that are oddly similar to the old characters (Ethann Isidore plays a shoddy rip off of “Plug” from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom”), and it has the air of a movie passing the torch (or lash) to the next generation.

But it does all of this in an even darker way than “The Force Awakens.”

I’m not sure how many fans want to see Indiana Jones as a helpless, broken old man hiding in a corner while his condescending goddaughter takes over, but that’s what we’re given. And it’s as bleak as it sounds.

Also, everything is smaller and cheaper than in the original trilogy. Indy against the military might of the Third Reich in 1936? We could all support that. But Indy against a scientist and his silent, interchangeable henchmen in 1969? It’s just not a big deal.

Mangold and his team diligently execute the action sequences, but it’s often hard to tell what’s going on or why. Besides, there is a dearth of surprising and exciting moments in which one want to putwith stand up and clapdespite the best efforts of the soulful soundtrack by John Williams.

Let’s look at an early manhunt in New York, for example.

It’s set during a parade honoring the three astronauts who were on the Apollo 11 lunar mission, so you can imagine the jokes Spielberg might have come up with: some Buzz Aldrin slapstick, perhaps, or a giant papier-mâché moon rolling. down Fifth Avenue like the rock in “Raiders of the Lost Ark.” But Mangold and his crew do so little with the parade that you wonder why they bothered to organize it.

The same goes for scenes where Indy comes face to face with snake-like eels or when he finds his way to Archimedes’ tomb.

The banter, the fun, and the exuberance just aren’t there, so instead of a joyous farewell to our beloved hero, we’re greeted with a depressing reminder of how much more lively his past adventures were.

Considering the script is credited to four writers: Mangold, David Koepp, and brothers Jez and John-Henry Butterworth, couldn’t they have at least thought of something cool for Indy to do with his whip?

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