Inferno keeps you on the edge of your seat for almost the entirety of its two hour run, filled to the brim with suspenseful chases across Europe and unexpected twists and turns.
That is to say, Inferno is exactly what you would expect from author Dan Brown and director Ron Howard, who seem to have worked out a distinct formula for the “Robert Langdon film” and adhere loyally to it. The third installment in the series, Inferno once again follows the adventures of renowned Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, as he is asked to decode elaborate classical art influenced schemes, along with a smart, attractive, young female sidekick. Like in Angels and Demons, Langdon races against time, and against deceit by the seemingly most charismatic characters, to locate an extremely dangerous substance, in this case a virus called “Inferno,” created by billionaire geneticist Bertrand Zobrist, that is designed ton wipe out the world’s population within a few days. Zobrist believes that he must create “Inferno” as a drastic cure for human overpopulation, which he believes will soon lead to the world’s end.
One of the only major ways Inferno differs from its predecessor is that the usually clear-minded and knowledgeable Langdon has suffered a head trauma that caused him to lose all memory of what transpired over the previous few days, and as the movie starts when Langdon wakes up at the hospital after this incident, the audience doesn’t have any more clues as to what’s going on than he does. This circumstance proved a bit overambitious for the movie adaptation, and as a result, it caused much more confusion than it generated intrigue and suspense. The gory visions Langdon at first experiences of a Dante-style Hell on earth are actually quite eerie and shocking, but their mystery only unravels into a huge and incomprehensible web of betrayal involving governments and private companies who apparently all want to get their hands on the virus. There are so many potential double agents involved, at some point it’s just not worth the effort to keep wondering who is allied with whom, and there is so much action constantly happening that it doesn’t even matter.
Inferno bombards its audience with formulaic elements of action, thrill, and suspense that keep eyes glued to the screen but overpower the elements of art history and religious history that give the Robert Langdon film series its uniqueness and flavor. The film is overwhelming in its overload of detail and sensory elements, from it’s complex and inscrutable plot to its fast paced globetrotting to its grand visual elements. However, the movie still ends feeling extremely underwhelming; all thematic and philosophical elements are shallowly and haphazardly developed, and character development is largely nonexistent, despite an unnecessary amount of time being devoted to the romantic tension between Langdon and WHO director Dr. Sinskey. The only real standout performance is by Irrfan Khan, who portrays a bold CEO with hilarious deadpan charm. Other than its effectiveness at keeping your attention, Inferno is on the whole uninteresting and comes off as a half-hearted attempt to continue the Robert Langdon film franchise. You’d probably be better off rewatching Angels and Demons.
The film is now playing.
