Does The Inferno measure up to The Da Vinci Code?
Director Ron Howard goes through the motions, but his heart is not in it
Who does this guy think he is — Jason Bourne?
Professor Robert Langdon, as played by Tom Hanks, might admit to delusions of Bournedom except that, like Bourne himself, he’s having trouble remembering much of anything these days.
The third Langdon movie, based on the fourth book by Dan “Da Vinci Code” Brown (wonder if there’s a clue in that ordering?), kicks off with the good professor waking up in an Italian hospital, not at all sure how he got there. Bad guys are after him, however, and so he leaves in the care of Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones).
What follows is a madcap chase across the prettier parts of Italy, as Langdon and Brooks evade various armed forces — wait, the World Health Organization has guns? — while trying to solve the riddle of an altered copy of Botticelli’s 15th-century painting Map of Hell, itself based on Dante’s Inferno.
But while the bones of Inferno (director Ron Howard’s Inferno, not Dante’s) are similar to those of 2006’s The Da Vinci Code and 2009’s Angels & Demons — ancient artifacts, anagrams, cryptic clues that sound like bad ’70s rock lyrics — the plot involves a more modern, less Catholic threat. (That noise you hear is the Pope sighing in relief.)
It seems genius geneticist Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), worried about overpopulation, has crafted a virus that will wipe out most of humanity. Being a fan of the medieval poet Dante (or possibly the modern Batman villain the Riddler), he has left a series of clues behind that will allow Langdon — or anyone else with a degree in the fictional science of symbology — to uncover the threat before it’s too late.
Time is always of the essence in these movies, which is why we often find the protagonists zipping across the country on trains, racing through streets like the wonderfully named Viale Machiavelli, or just running, not just pell-mell, but pell-mell-hell.
But somewhere along the path of adapting Brown’s novel, screenwriter David Koepp (Indiana Jones IV, Premium Rush) has gotten a little lost himself.
How else to explain Langdon’s out-of-left-field love interest (it’s not Dr. Brooks, who’s young enough to be his daughter), the clichéd dialogue (“trust no one”) and characters who switch their allegiance every time the plot demands a new twist?
Providing some much-needed levity to the proceedings is Irrfan Khan as Harry Sims, basically playing a smarter-than-average Bond henchman, slowly realizing that his boss wants to take over the world.
This is Howard’s third Langdon picture, but you can tell his heart isn’t in it — he seems to be relaxing between passion projects like the recent Beatles documentary and his upcoming Zelda Fitzgerald biopic. There’s currently one more book to adapt, The Lost Symbol, which could be fun because it’s set in Washington, and Langdon might run into Nic Cage’s character from the National Treasure movies.
Meanwhile, there’s Inferno: To coin an anagram, “exploit nuance and battle forge” — that is, unexceptional and forgettable.