Indiana Jones star Harrison Ford 'deeply moved' by Cannes Film Festival award

Indiana Jones star Harrison Ford said he was "deeply moved and humbled" as he received an honorary Palme d'Or at the Cannes Film Festival on Thursday.

The 80-year-old US actor was presented with the award ahead of the premiere of Indiana Jones and the Dial Of Destiny.

His final turn as the intrepid whip-toting archaeologist was among the most highly anticipated of the festival.

Ford said the character he first played in 1981's Raiders Of The Lost Ark had been a great part of his life.

"They say when you're about to die you see your life flash before your eyes," said a tearful Ford, after audiences were shown a highlight reel of his career before the film began. "And I just saw my life flash before my eyes.

"A great part of my life but not all of my life," he added, before thanking his wife, Ally McBeal actress Calista Flockhart, for having "supported my passion and my dreams".

In his fifth-and-final outing at the action hero, Ford stars alongside Mads Mikkelsen and Fleabag writer and actress Phoebe Waller-Bridge, who plays his character's goddaughter.

Addressing the audience directly, he continued: "You've given my life purpose and meaning and I'm grateful for that. So grateful to have the opportunity to work with others like Phoebe and Mads.

"I am deeply moved by this honour, and humbled - but I got a movie you gotta see. So let me get out of the way."

While its star received a rapturous applause for his career achievements, the film itself got only a "lukewarm" - by Cannes standards - five-minute applause at the end, according to Variety's Zack Sharf.

Set in 1969, against the backdrop of the space race, the film finds its protagonist once again fighting Nazis and includes flashback scenes to the 1940s, in the years between previous films The Last Crusade and The Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.

The Guardian's Pete Bradshaw awarded the "taut" movie three stars, saying it had "quite a bit of zip and fun and narrative ingenuity with all its MacGuffiny silliness that the last one [Kingdom of the Crystal Skull] really didn't."

He praised Waller-Bridge - who was born four years after the first Indiana Jones film - for her "tremendous co-star turn as Indy's roguish goddaughter Helena Shaw, who wears shorts and shirt making her look like a grownup, naughty Enid Blyton heroine".

"And in fact some amazing digital youthification effects give Indy himself a great opening flashback section back in the second world war," Bradshaw added.

And while he felt it was "probably a bit cheeky to be giving Ford a young female co-star under this 'goddaughter' tag," the finale, he said, was still "wildly silly and entertaining".

"Indiana Jones still has a certain old-school class."

The Telegraph's Robbie Collin was less enthusiastic, awarding only two stars though for what he described as "shabby counterfeit of priceless treasure".

The reviewer stressed how "the shape and the gleam of it might be superficially convincing for a bit, but the shabbier craftsmanship gets all the more glaring the longer you look."

He added that "the film is loaded with mayhem but painfully short on spark and bravado: there's no shot here, nor twist of choreography, that makes you marvel at the filmmaking mind that conceived it."

There was another two-star review from Kevin Maher of the Times, who said: "The good news is that it's not as poor as Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. The bad news is that it's not much better.

"Ford, despite all this, remains on charisma overload. Even when the machine around him is on autopilot, he brings his weathered gravitas to perhaps his most significant character. Inevitably he, and Indy, deserved better."

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny marks the first film in the franchise not to be directed by Steven Spielberg, with James Mangold (The Wolverine and Ford v Ferrari) taking the reins instead.

The director, who also previously made Girl Interrupted and Walk the Line, said he was aiming at the "best version" of what his childhood hero, Spielberg, had done with the four previous films.

Spielberg, he told the AFP news agency, "has been a hero of mine all my life", adding: "I saw the first Indiana Jones movie when I was 17. It's a big chair to sit in, but it was also a huge personal opportunity."

He said the new movie was "me kind of emulating my mentor and trying to tell a story," adding: "Of course, it's still me, and not him."

The Hollywood Reporter's David Rooney opined that the film had "a feel of something written by committee". He said it "does have is a sweet blast of pure nostalgia in the closing scene, a welcome reappearance foreshadowed with a couple visual clues early on."

However, he added that "part of what dims the enjoyment of this concluding chapter is just how glaringly fake so much of it looks".

Total Film's James Mottram viewed things differently, noting that Indiana Jones "goes out on a high."

"The action is slickly handled by Mangold, not least a thrilling tuk-tuk chase through Tangier. But best of all, this is an Indiana Jones film with tears in its eyes. We see the character has grown older, but not necessarily wiser.

"Drinking a bit too much, he's full of regrets about pursuing fortune and glory and leaving his loved ones behind."

Ford told the same film magazine last month that this would be "the final film in the series" and "the last time I'll play the character."

And while Disney is developing a TV series, Ford confirmed: "I will not be involved in that, if it does come to fruition."

Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is out in UK cinemas on 28 June.

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