Film review: Inferno **

By Alexia Evripidou

Inferno, the latest blockbuster in Dan Brown’s Da Vinci Code series, is a bog standard popcorn movie that doesn’t disappoint, as long as your expectations are set to relatively mediocre. It’s not a bad film per se and it does have good qualities, one being that it can encourage a mini brain workout trying to solve some of its riddles. Still, it is a lengthy two house plus one minute long. I was however entertained enough with its twists and turns, puzzles, beautiful Italian scenery and subplots to watch it to the end. Still, the film was less about solving the Dante inspired clues and sadly more concerned with who lead character Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) could trust; steering it away from mystery and more into drama.

Inferno is the third in the series of the Langdon adventures by acclaimed novelist Dan Brown, who this time reaches further field than conspiracies within the Catholic Church to probe the domain of saving the world from a global pandemic. The film begins in typical Langdon style with people trying to kill this Harvard symbolist as he travels around Europe nursing a head trauma and temporary amnesia. With little but random visions depicting hell incarnate to guide him, he tries to unlock hidden meanings and riddles to stop a manmade virus spreading and culling over half of the world’s population. Visually and plot wise, there’s a lot going and the film can get messy at times; often jumping from one place to another, goodie to baddy, secret passage way and drone chases through the trees etc. Unfortunately however, as entertaining as that is, it comes at the expense of good quality riddles, which Dan Brown’s work is often synonymous with.

Against the stunning backdrop of Florence, Langdon escapes death by a gun shot to the head and wakes up confused in an Italian hospital. A beautiful and pouty British ER doctor Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) informs him that he is suffering from head trauma and as a result, cannot remember the past 48 hours of his life. Desperate to collate the pieces of these missing hours, Langdon is in little state to do much, fortunately for him however, the young doctor Brooks is one of his biggest fans. Together they set about Europe, piecing together clues using Dante’s The Divine Comedy as a tool to figure out why so many different groups of people are perpetually trying to kill him. These include a gang of heavily armed World Health Organisation members, a seemingly rogue police officer and an underground syndicate of shady agents led by the super talented actor Irrfan Khan (Harry Sims.) Khan’s performance arguably saves the film; he demands screen attention and most definitely deserves it as the cool, calm and ruthless fixer of this organisation. Although both Hanks and Jones performances are well played, they don’t really seem to gel well together and do not have the energy that Khan’s character does.

Although the film’s twists and turns mean it is difficult to keep up, the main theme is the concept that there are too many people in this world and before long we will be the living depiction of Dante’s hell. Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) is a billionaire public speaker, who is convinced that the world is on its way to its sixth extinction, this time as a result of over population. So he takes matters into his own hands and tries to annihilate the majority of the population under the premise that he will be thanked for doing so one day. As frightening as this is, it does play on some valid global concerns.

As great as Brown’s books are, sadly they seem to lose lustre in the screenplay adaptations; a real shame, as if done well, the material in the books could make for very exciting films which combine mystery, riddle solving and all out action. Unfortunately Inferno tends to plod rather than excite.

Inferno

DIRECTED BY Ron Howard

STARRING Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Ben Foster, Irrfan Khan

US 2016          121 mins