Gutsy call to open with the sound of a ticking clock. Because by this point, honey, maybe it is the years. While there are a bunch of things that make this final (pleasepleaseplease) installment of the Indiana Jones series not so much maddening as disappointing, the film's biggest sin is how unthrilling it all is. You've got your Nazis, your trains, your planes, your chases, your shootouts, your ancient temples, your powerful artifacts, your friendships, your betrayals, all your standard Indy elements (including the shamelessly fetishized fedora and whip), and yet, what you don't have is energy, momentum, pop. Long before a watch appeared onscreen as a plot element, I was thinking of a timepiece winding down. The gears are in place, and it's trying to do its job, but it's stuck running slow. Scenes run too long. Performances feel tired — never mind a game Harrison Ford throwing geriatric jabs, how is Mads Mikkelsen not terrifying here in the role of a genius who just might be able to fix Hitler's mistakes? Even the CGI that opens the film is lazy: sometimes, youngified Indy looks more like Dennis Quaid, sometimes his lips don't match the dialogue, sometimes he dances weightlessly atop a train, and always his eyes are distant and dead. As our hero's goddaughter, Phoebe Waller-Bridge does her best to play the sort of charismatic rascal we remember from long ago — her impromptu escape attempt from a boarded boat is maybe the film's best-built scene — but then, this isn't her film. Even if she does wind up making the decisions that bring the movie to its utterly unearned conclusion. (And that after a climax in which the aforementioned gears slip and send the whole endeavor spinning into outright silliness.) (2023) — Matthew Lickona
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