C&C 5: Indiana Jones 5, Gold Brick, The Siberia Job
An under-the-radar heist movie and an unusual caper novel
Seek your Barbenheimer updates elsewhere. I’m running weeks behind on new releases, as you’ll see.
What I’m Watching
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (2023). I went into the theater with the bar low. All this movie had to do was wash away the sour taste of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, still lingering fifteen years later. Crystal Skull is the sole Indy film I’ve only seen once, and I remember almost nothing about it. Reviewing the cast list was a revelation. Wait, Ray Winstone was in it? And John Hurt? Seriously, Jim Broadbent?
I knew I’d see Dial no matter the reviews, because I’m fully invested in this series. A friend said that you were either a Star Wars kid or an Indy kid, and while I don’t truck with fallacious pop culture contests—Beatles or Rolling Stones: CHOOSE YOUR FIGHTER!—I’m inclined to buy into that one, because it boils down to what’s your preferred flavor of pulp, Buck Rogers or Doc Savage. Someday I’ll write a post trying to figure out why, as much as I’ve enjoyed some Marvel films, I’d rather watch the 1930s-set superhero movies of the 1990s, The Shadow (1994) and The Phantom (1996). Maybe it’s because they both feature cab drivers.
Dial’s not perfect. It’s too long—what movie isn’t? Hang on and I’ll tell you—and it’s under the impression that we watch Indy movies for the problem-solving. Nothing will ever match the beautiful simplicity of Raiders of the Lost Ark’s “They’re digging in the wrong place.”
But from the first frame, digitally de-aged Harrison Ford and all, Dial feels like an Indiana Jones movie. James Mangold, the only person other than Steven Spielberg to direct one of these films, understands the vibe and does everything he can to deliver it. He oversees a shrewd updating of the material, dispensing with the culturally tone-deaf touches of the earlier entries in a manner that isn’t heavy-handed. Phoebe Waller-Bridge charms as Indy’s unscrupulous yet resourceful goddaughter; the Renee Patrick side of my brain must point out that her mod 1960s wardrobe, courtesy of costume designer Joanna Johnston, not only looks fantastic but would sell right now. The period New York streets (and Indy’s shabby apartment) also won me over, as did seeing John Rhys-Davies’s Sallah behind the wheel of a hack. See? It is the cab drivers.
Above all, you have Ford’s utterly committed performance, one in which the actor is unafraid to show his age and acknowledge the passing of time. Dial feels like a valedictory for the actor, for his signature character, for the decades we’ve spent following him. Part of me will always think of Indy’s farewell as him literally riding off into the sunset at the end of Last Crusade (1989). But I walked out of Dial humming the theme, and that hasn’t happened in a while.
Gold Brick (2023). Ninety-six minutes. Sometimes that’s all you need.
This French heist movie, written and directed by Jérémie Rozan and streaming on Netflix, doesn’t shy away from the issue of class. Its foundation is that the idea that the game is rigged—those born ahead will always stay ahead—so the best the rest of us can do is score whatever we can. And the perfect way to do that is to hit ‘em where it hurts, square in the luxuries.
It plays out in Chartres, depicted here as the Kansas City of France. Daniel (Raphaël Quenard, bringing young Gallic Viggo Mortensen energy with a soupçon of Willem Dafoe) is a good-hearted hustler, but the system grinds him down until he’s forced into a job at the town’s crown jewel, a distributor of high-end fragrances. He figures out a way to pilfer perfumes, only to realize he’s thinking nowhere near big enough. Soon he’s running a company within the company, dedicated to systematic theft and prey to its own organizational problems. And, of course, the rich are always going to have their say. Gold Brick relies too much on voiceover, but it’s fleet and fun, with some choice needle drops.
What I’m Reading
The Siberia Job, by Josh Haven (2023). More financial misdeeds among the superrich. Haven’s Fake Money, Blue Smoke is one of my favorite recent novels, and he strikes again with this odd but entertaining book, a fictionalization of a true story. (At CrimeReads, Haven explains how the tale fell into his lap.) In the 1990s, an antsy American financier throws in with a Czech businessman to score big in the wild west of Russia. They travel the breadth of the country, roping all manner of people into their madcap scheme to buy up shares of an energy company—which is not Gazprom—only to rouse the wrath of the government, the Russian mafia, and pretty much everyone else. Haven himself even turns up late. Full of wild excesses and details so ridiculous they must be true.