Movie Review: Inferno

Robert Langdon’s had a haircut but the third instalment in his film saga is just as shaggy as The Da Vinci Code. Sadly ‘taking a little more off the sides’ would not be enough to cure its ills.

Inferno is the latest entry in a blockbuster franchise that no-one seemingly feels any affinity for, except maybe author Dan Brown’s accountant.

Every few years, director Ron Howard and Tom Hanks join forces to adapt another Indiana Jones pastiche. Donald Trump might call these flicks “low energy” and fact-checkers would have to give him the tick.

Howard and Hanks skipped The Lost Symbol, Brown’s 2009 sequel to The Da Vinci Code, and here jump straight to 2013’s Inferno, which is either a sign of indifference, or, more concerningly, a sign of quality control. (Wait: this is the series at its best?)

Hanks plays Langdon, a symbologist and professional puzzle-cracker who looks like the popular actor Tom Hanks, only robbed of his signature sparkle.

Inferno begins with Langdon in a Florence hospital room, having endured a bullet to the head and suffering from a mild case of amnesia – which is actually a pretty great diagnosis, considering. His doctor, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), breaks him out of the ward when an assassin arrives to finish the job, and offers to help him remember what, exactly, has put him in the middle of this mess.

How sweet. The real mystery… was inside Langdon all along. (Less sweet: Brown and screenwriter David Koepp are now relying on their hero to simply recall answers, rather than figure them out.)

Langdon and Brooks deduce billionaire madman Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) is behind all of this somehow, even though he was found dead days earlier. Langdon eventually discovers Zobrist’s map on his person – natch - depicting Dante Alighieri's description of hell and its many descending circles. He realises Zobrist was conspiring to unleash a new plague on Earth, to stem overpopulation, and concludes following the map’s clues will allow them to find the disease’s planned point of release.

To solve this riddle, however, the duo will need to use Langdon’s ultimate superpower: unfettered access to the world’s museums. He doesn’t even need identification lanyards, or nuthin’. Swoon.

Stultifying sarcasm aside, visiting the Palazzo Vecchio, the Florence Baptistery and Hagia Sophia – with Langdon’s all-access-pass – is pretty much the reason to see Inferno. You don’t even need to pay attention to the contrived plot machinations, dull dialogue or Howard’s leaden direction; even if by accident, Salvatore Totino’s canted camera captures some of the world’s most astounding artistic monuments. And they look very nice.

Otherwise, there’s little to enjoy in Inferno, which lists a two-hour running time, but I have my suspicions. (My eyes drooped heavily during its interminable middle-section, and I fear that I might snap awake any moment and find myself still watching the second act.)

Tom Hanks, so reliably compelling and charismatic in everything else he’s ever done, is grossly miscast, asked to play against all of his natural instincts as the dreary Langdon. You’d rather watch Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger run around Italy with Felicity Jones. At least you know he’d wrap things up professionally and within 208 seconds.

It doesn’t help that Hanks has to share the screen with Irrfan Khan, who, in another world, would have been a better Indiana Jones stand-in than nice-guy Tom. In this, he plays an enigmatic ‘problem-solver’ who acts alternately as a thorn in Langdon's side and his rescuer. He has a scoundrel’s charm and rascal’s sense of humour. He’s wildly underutilised, too.

No other actors are able to leave quite the same impression as Khan: not Sidse Babett Knudsen, as the head of the World Health Organisation and Langdon’s former flame; not Foster, as the Bond villain with his very own TED talk; and not Jones, as a prodigious genius who often outpaces Langdon in the puzzle-cracking stakes. I'll let the blame fall at the filmmakers' feet for that.

The sluggish Inferno is also burdened by its ‘no duh’ twist. It’s the most glaringly obvious reveal since, well, The Girl on the Train, making October particularly difficult for those with partners who feel compelled to whisper predictions during a film’s first 30 minutes. With the mysterious Arrival on the immediate horizon, our hearts go out to them during this difficult time.

2/5

In cinemas October 13. Rated M for mature themes, violence and coarse language.