Ford knocks it out of the ark

Indiana Jones' fifth instalment is back to form as its ageing star hangs up his fedora.

- Russell Baillie

INDIANA JONES & THE DIAL OF DESTINY

Directed by James Mangold

4/5

The Indiana Jones films were always inflated tributes to something else. They were inspired by the action-adventure matinees that Steven Spielberg and George Lucas grew up on. So despite having an 80-year-old Harrison Ford playing a rumpled Dr Jones in 1969, that the fifth film pays close homage to the original action-adventure trilogy is to be expected. It does that right from the film's Nazithumping flashback prologue set in 1945 Germany, complete with a remarkable computer de-aged version of Ford.

The fifth Indiana Jones also pretty much forgets the terrible fourth, 2008's Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, in which Spielberg attempted to give the series a sci-fi edge with a close encounter of the Amazon kind. That film was so forgettable that when in this, a doleful Jones briefly explains what happened to his son, it takes a while to remember that in the previous film, Shia LaBeouf played Mutt, the offspring Jones didn't know he had with long-time love Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen). On the upside, at least this progeny of a beloved Ford character didn't turn out to be the next Darth Vader.