WARNING: SPOILERS

In a movie in which an 81-year-old man (Harrison Ford), playing a 69-year-old man (Indiana Jones), outraces New York subways on a horse, survives fistfights, gunshots wounds, tuk-tuk car crashes and rapid scuba-diving resurfacings, not to mention attacks from eels, scorpions and spiders, and then, why not, travels back through time in a Nazi war plane to 212 B.C. and meets Archimedes, the great philosopher-mathematician, during the Siege of Syracuse, amid all of this, I, of course, couldn’t get past the following incongruity: 

Would a kid really be wearing a Bob Griese jersey in August 1969?

I mean, it’s possible: Griese was around. He was a rookie in ’67. But there were bigger NFL QB names back then: Johnny Unitas, Joe Namath, Bart Starr. Plus jerseys or jersey-shirts weren’t prevalent yet. A blank 12 jersey in Dolphins colors feels more like a ’70s thing.

But everything else? Yeah, why not.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” is the fifth installment in the series, and at 2.5 hours, plus .5 for the previews, it was a tad long for this old man. But both my wife and I felt it was a little better than its word of mouth.

More: It seems like the past and future of movies all at once.

Everything old is new again
It’s the past of movies for obvious reasons: he old. We first saw Indy in the summer of 1981 in “Raiders of the Lost Ark”—the No. 1 movie of the year and still No. 22 all-time adjusted for inflation—and then kept revisiting him: in 1984 (“Temple of Doom,” No. 2 for the year), 1989 (“Last Crusade,” No. 2) and 2008 (“Crystal Skull,” No. 3). He’s nostalgic. He’s the good old days. You can feel it in the number of times director James Mangold holds the camera on his iconic fedora and bullwhip. What is it—four times? Five? Twelve? Find someone who looks at you the way James Mangold looks at Indiana Jones’ fedora, basically.

And here’s the thing: Indiana Jones started out nostalgic. In the 1970s, George Lucas wanted to create a throwback to Saturday afternoon movie serials of the 1930s and ’40s, but with A-production values, and Steven Spielberg said “Sign me up!” And it totally worked. Which means we’re now nostalgic for that time when we were nostalgic for that other time. That’s why the movie feels like it’s the past.

It feels like the future because of that opening sequence.

Near the end of WWII, Nazis are trying to scram from one of their many occupied countries when they capture an enemy agent and bring him hooded before Col. Weber (Thomas Kretschmann). When the hood is removed … ta da! … it’s Indiana Jones! Looking great. Thanks to CG and AI and who knows what other acronyms, he looks about 35 again. And sure, when he first speaks, we get that old-man Harrison growl and you’re like, “OK, that’s not fooling anybody.” But then that problem goes away, and suddenly we’re getting brand new scenes of Indiana Jones in his prime running from Nazis and battling them atop trains. It’s amazing.

And worrisome. We are now that much closer to the day when we won’t need new actors, when CGI and AI storytellers will give us new James Bond movies starring 1964 Sean Connery, or new “Star Wars” films with the ’77 crew, or maybe 1978 Christopher Reeve and 1989 Michael Keaton teaming up as Superman and Batman. Or did they already do that in “The Flash”? At what point does the culture stagnate? And have we already reached that point? And what does it do to us as a result? Would we do something stupid like, I don't know, elect a sociopathic game show host as president?

Anyway, that’s why it felt both exciting and depressing.

Indy’s latest holy grail is introduced in that opener: the titular Dial created by Archimedes, which supposedly reveals fissures in time that allow for time travel. Indy doesn’t buy any of that hocus-pocus but his Brit companion Basil Shaw (Toby Jones) is less skeptical, while their Nazi nemesis, Dr. Voller (Mads Mikkelsen), is all in. But he only has half of it. And then he gets punched off the train. Auf wiedersehen. 

Cut to: Moon Day 1969. Initially I thought that meant July 20, the small step/great leap day, but here it’s the day the Apollo 11 astronauts are feted with a ticker-tape parade in Manhattan. That actually happened, by the way, and it was huge, and it was followed by a ticker-tape parade in Chicago and then a state dinner in LA presided over by Pres. Nixon—who, yes, could’ve used the Archimedes Dial himself—but parade day back then wasn’t called “Moon Day.” The newspaper usage of “Moon Day” in 1969 mostly concerned legislative talk to turn July 20 into a national holiday. Yes, didn’t happen.

If life for Indy in 1945 was exciting, by 1969 it’s just annoying. His wife has left him, his neighbors are damn hippies listening to that damn Beatles music (“Magical Mystery Tour”), and his students don’t know the answers. Oh, and he’s being forced to retire. Oh, and his son from the previous movie, Mutt (Shia LaBeouf), died during the Vietnam War. No surprise, really. In 2008, LeBeouf was a huge rising star and now he’s problematic. So: Vietnam War.

Wait, one of Indy’s students does know the answers! Except she’s not his student. She’s his goddaughter, Helena Shaw (Phoebe Waller-Bridge), yes, the daughter of ol’ Basil, now deceased. Turns out she’s a bit larcenous, too. She wants the half of the Archimedes Dial that Indy took from her father—not for academic reasons but to sell to the highest bidder in Tangier. Another group (coincidentally?) shows up at the same time: Indy’s old nemesis Dr. Voller, with henchmen Klaber (Boyd Holbrook of “Narcos”: good) and Hauke (Olivier Richters: huge). Colleagues at Hunter College are killed, there’s a chase through the Apollo 11 ticker-tape parade, and Indy escapes on a horse but is of course blamed for the murders. And now we’re off to the races. 

In Tangier, we’re introduced to the Griese jersey-wearing kid Teddy (Ethann Isidore), Helena’s larcenous sidekick, when Voller & Co. show up for another round of chase-me-I’m-yours. Then it’s the Aegean Sea, for scuba-diving with Indy’s old friend Renaldo (Antonio Banderas) and more chasing. Then Sicily and Archimedes’ Tomb. Each is a roller-coaster ride, and along the way Helena becomes less larcenous while Indy becomes more of a believer in the destiny of the Dial—particularly when they spot a wristwatch on Archimedes’ skeletal frame. But it’s at this moment, when they have both halves of the Dial, that Voller & Co. finally catch up and … yoink! They take both the Dial and Indy.

Voller/Mads is great, by the way. He wants Indy along not as a hostage but as a peer. He’s excited to show him what he’s done, and he wants Indy to be excited, too. Plus his plan is wonderfully ironic. Whenever the idea of time machines is brought up, the answer for many in the western world is to go back and kill Hitler. Which is exactly what Voller wants to do! Except he wants to do it to preserve Nazi victories. He wants to go back to ’39—maybe before Poland?—and kill him then. He wants a sensible Nazi Germany. I guess he’s nostalgic, too. Make Nazism Great Again.

Of course he overshoots the mark and winds up in 212 B.C.

Heavy lifting
Did anyone else think the warring factions in the Siege of Syracuse dealt with the sudden appearance of a WWII airplane with something like aplomb? They call it a dragon and start throwing spears, but c’mon, has any of them seen a dragon? Is no one deathly afraid of this huge metal thing in the sky? Also 212 B.C. spears turn out to be pretty effective. They actually down the thing and burn the Nazis. We knew how to make spears then. We knew how to burn Nazis.

Did anyone else think Helena—not to mention the movie—discounts Teddy’s achievements rather quickly? On the 1969 runway, he not only commandeers a plane and flies it for the first time, he pilots it through the timehole, then lands the sucker next to the warplane wreckage. He’s the reason they’re able to return. Otherwise they’re stuck there. How about a “Thank god” from her? Instead, she’s all, “Great work, kid, now don’t get cocky!” basically.

Because by this point she’s dealing with an Indiana Jones that doesn’t want to return to 1969. He’d rather hang with Archimedes in 212 B.C. than listen to one more Beatles song. I get it: archaeology. It’s the past as present. But talk about mucking with the timeline. Was anyone else disappointed in our longstanding hero? 

Thankfully, Helena saves the day—and shortens the movie—by cold-cocking him. When he wakes up, it’s 1969 again. Think about all the heavy lifting she has to do here: drag Indy to Teddy’s plane in 212 B.C., fly with Teddy back through the timehole and somehow land on exactly the right century/year/day/time when they left; then (I assume) she has to drag him back to America, and New York City, and his apartment, and put him to bed. And while he’s still sleeping it off (helluva punch, girl), she reunites him with Karen Allen! She gets her to return! She gives him a reason to live! Then she takes Sallah (John Rhys-Davies: thinner) and all of his kids out for ice cream to give the lovebirds a moment. 

Not bad for a woman who just wanted to sell half the Dial to the highest bidder in Tangier.

I’d heard Waller-Bridge wasn’t good, or her character was annoying, or something, but, no, she’s fine, it’s just that the character is inconsistent. She changes 180 degrees for no apparent reason. Plus you’d have to believe that Toby Jones, god bless him, sired this tall drink of water. That’s the Bob Griese jersey all over again.