Tom Hanks returns as Robert Langdon in new Dan Brown adaptation.
Like a riddle with no solution, the phenomenon of Dan Brown’s glorified airport puzzle books in the early 21st century can seem mystifying. Despite being his fourth novel, 2003’s The Da Vinci Code worldwide success cemented the template of arcane, art world-based enigmas, wrapped up in globetrotting travelogue pursuits.
In the books – whose literary merits have long been mocked – protagonist and Harvard symbology expert Robert Langdon couldn’t be more of a naked plea to cast Harrison Ford if Brown had claimed the character grew up in Jones, Indiana. The movies eventually plumped for everyone’s all-American, Tom Hanks, an unlikely action hero, but a steady, empathetic hand to steer multiplex crowds through Brown’s baroque Euro-villainy.
Inferno, both novel and now movie, comes a good few years since the last Langdon adventures in print and onscreen (2009’s The Last Symbol and Angels and Demons respectively) though you’d never guess. Once again Langdon shuttles around gorgeous European architecture, a younger woman in tow (here Felicity Jones is his beleaguered E.R. nurse) trying to solve a global conspiracy through a series of clues set by a criminal mastermind with waaaay too much time on his hands. Here, billionaire bioengineer Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), sickened by mankind’s excess, has rigged a virus to kill half the world’s population. “Humanity is the disease. Inferno is the cure,” he solemnly intones, sounding more like a poster tagline for a macho ‘80s action flick starring Stallone or Chuck Norris than divine angel of death.
Here, the usually unflappable Langdon is, for once, flapping; an amnesiac reeling from a blow to the head and strung out on hallucinations. It’s fashionable to sneer at director Ron Howard, who despite decades of success, never gets lauded in hushed auteur tones like fellow commercial juggernauts Fincher, Nolan and co. Howard is far better than often given credit for, (Splash, Apollo 13, The Missing to name three class acts) but mainly when he plays to his honest craftsman strengths.
Sadly, the attempts to convey Langdon’s altered state conjures up an unholy amalgam of medieval cosplay, deleted scenes from Jacob’s Ladder and a few Kubrick-lite homages. Compare and contrast Hanks’s hectic breakdown in the opening scenes here, to the low-key yet devastating closing moments of Captain Phillips, for a telling lesson in less is more and trusting your actor – from handheld jitterbug Bourne supremo Paul Greengrass, no less.
The first two-thirds, then, of Inferno, are hellishly rote and dull. But then, what should you expect in the equivalent of watching someone solve a Sudoku outside ornate tourist attractions? This is where the book, for all its literary crimes, easily trumps the film, as readers have the time to pore over clues on the page and play detective alongside the characters. Here, the script is so busy walking and talking, explaining itself – you expect Austin Powers’ Basil Exposition to pop up at any moment – that it achieves the neat paradox of being breathless and tedious.
It doesn’t help that the basic plot – and the film is pretty much all plot - strains credibility on so many levels, particularly the idea that a mastermind would lead a breadcrumb trail to foil his own plans, or that the W.H.O. (World Health Organisation) has somehow morphed into the C.I.A.
And through all this, we’re stuck with Robert Langdon, probably the single most boring protagonist to ever anchor a major franchise and one which tests Hanks’s innate likability and watchability to its absolute limits. A-list screenwriter David Koepp (Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible) does his best to inject a tentative long-lost romance into the mix, but Casablanca this ain’t.
A sort of redemption eventually emerges when the double- and triple-crossing narrative finally justifies many of its hitherto baffling narrative twists. Howard marshals the subterranean Istanbul climax with brisk efficiency. Hans Zimmer’s pulsing, synth-heavy score is a welcome – and rare – subversion of expectations. And the increasing prominence of quality international actors like Sidse Babett Knudsen (Borgen, Westworld) and the ever-twinkling Irrfan Khan (Life of Pi, Jurassic World) makes for a much smoother ride. But, for discerning audiences, swapping purgatory for the seventh circle of Hell still leaves you a long way from movie heaven.
The Verdict
Despite a few heavy-handed attempts to jazz things up visually, Inferno, as with its two prequels, is basically the exact cinematic equivalent of its Dan Brown airport novel inspirations: big, flashy and easy to consume, but, despite its puzzlebox narrative (that film audiences literally have no chance to figure out themselves unless they’re Langdon-level scholars), flimsy in its cardboard characters, ideas and attempts to generate genuine tension. “Nothing changes behaviour like pain,” threatens maniacal Zobrist early on. Let’s hope future prospective Brown/Langdon screen outings take him at his word.
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