Hanks warms to Inferno
Returns as brainy, globe-trotting professor
Tom Hanks returns as Harvard professor Robert Langdon in a third Dan Brown thriller from Da Vinci Code director Ron Howard.
This one is called Inferno. It opens with Langdon being revived in a Florence, Italy, hospital suffering from partial amnesia and demonic flashes.
With assistance from Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), a recovering Langdon starts to understand that a psychopathic billionaire (Ben Foster) has decided to solve the world’s over-population problem by extreme measures. The professor and the doctor race across Europe in an apparent effort to thwart the lethal plan.
Here are five more things you should know about the film:
Howard’s made more than 23 movies over three decades, some of them Oscar honoured. But he’s never been much of a sequel guy until the Da Vinci Code franchise.
The affable Howard says he still enjoys delving into the series’ premise, which he insists counts on different themes, including Inferno’s unique glimpse into good versus evil through Dante’s epic 14th-century story Divine Comedy.
He blames Brown for creating the character and Howard for making his actor’s life so welcoming when he does.
Seven years later, the Oscar-winning actor returns as the whipsmart puzzle solver saving the day. He says he thinks of Inferno as his own little scavenger hunt with a brain, international backdrops and a plot twist or two.
Howard outdid himself. More than 70% of the film was shot on location in the cities of Venice, Florence, Budapest and Istanbul.
The director had his travelogue moments framing Venice’s Doge’s Palace and Piazza San Marco and in Florence at Palazzo Pitti, Boboli Gardens, Ponte Vecchio and the Uffizi Gallery.
Author Brown continues his role as an idea man in the world of intellectual thrillers. His Inferno hit stores in 2013 and became yet another number one on the New York Times bestseller’s list.
Who else would combine overpopulation and the modern idea of what hell is into a high-minded mystery?
Again, Brown received mixed reviews for his “jam-packed trickery,” but fans scooped up more than six million copies of the novel worldwide.
Despite mediocre film reviews for 2006’s The Da Vinci Code and 2009’s Angels & Demons, both earned decent box office scores. And Inferno looks like it will follow suit.
Inferno is tracking close to $500 million globally for its run, which would put the new movie in Angels & Demons territory but short
The Da Vinci Code’s $758 million.