OK, lets get straight to it, the question that everybody wants to know the answer to. Harrison Ford is knocking on towards retirement age, so does he… does he…? Yes, I can confirm it. Harrison Ford does wear a syrup. It’s a good one though, you can’t see the join.

So, it’s 1957, the height of the cold war. When we first meet up with Indy, he’s the captive of Irena Spalko (Cate Blanchett) a Soviet agent/paranormal investigator. It seems Joe Stalin figures he can use paranormal weapons in his crusade against the West and has enlisted Spalko to find them. Actually, don’t laugh, Ms Blanchet is the best thing about this adventure. She’s quite simply the best Bond villainess, not actually in a Bond movie. But the plot, which is presumably an attempt to move the story on, draws in elements of the Roswell Incident, the ‘reds under the beds’ feel of the 1950’s and some of Erich Von Daniken’s loopiest theories.

The opening set piece in Hangar 51 pretty much sets the tone for the film, which is basically a whole series of action set-pieces, held together by one of the silliest and most unnecessarily complicated storylines ever conceived. Indy has a sidekick, Mac (Ray Winstone) who seems to keep swapping sides at five minute intervals and is clearly the most unreliable sidekick in history. Along the way, he teams up with young biker boy Mutt (Shia leBeouf) and bumps into old flame, Marion Ravenwood (Karen Allen). The big reveal here is so obvious from the word go, even a six year old could work it out.

To be fair to him, Ford just about manages to get away with the action scenes, but in an attempt to give it an extra edge, everything is amped up to the Nth degree. When they go over a waterfall, it can’t just be an ordinary waterfall, it has to be the biggest waterfall ever and for extra measure, they have to go over three of them. When Indy survives a nuclear explosion by hiding in a fridge, even the most devoted Indy fan is going to raise an eyebrow in disbelief. The film also suffers heavily from the Da Vinci Code factor, where plot twist has to be hidden behind a series of cryptic clues and frankly, the final climax in an ancient temple (of doom) has a weary, ‘seen it all before’ quality that no amount of special effects is ever going to rescue.

You can’t completely dismiss this film. It’s well made, provides some thrills and spills for the undiscerning viewer and has the odd good bit scattered throughout its duration, but after so long away it needed to be simpler and more consistent than what we’re offered here. The cute ending was frankly awful. Three stars, no cigars.