I run breathless from the movie theater to give you a first-day review of Ron Howard’s Inferno …
Inferno (Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan, Ben Foster) – If Ron Howard hadn’t kept us in rapturous suspense, careening through the streets, tunnels, and ancient water systems of Florence, Venice and Istanbul, we would have noticed just how implausible the third in the series of films adapted from Dan Brown’s novels truly is. A worthy successor to The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons, Inferno puts Professor Robert Langdon smack in the middle of the plot rather than only the sleuth and biblical puzzle-savant.
Tom Hanks reprises his role as Langdon except that, this time, he is in trouble. He wakes up in a hospital with a head wound and amnesia. He is having visions of a doomed world of people with backwards heads, blood-filled rivers, and assorted other hells. His doctor is a lovely young woman, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones of The Theory of Everything), who not only fixes his wound but also helps him escape from a motorcycle-riding, sub-machinegun-toting female cop and a horde of frightening, armed anti-terrorists from that most feared and sinister forces in the world – The World Health Organization! Seriously, the elite unit is from the WHO.
You see, Langdon is carrying a fingerprint-protected biohazard container (about the size of a cigar case) that he fears contains a virus that can wipe out half the world. But no, it contains a light which projects Dante’s vision of hell … but with some alterations. That sends Langdon and Sienna on their cross-European adventures. So they are looking for Dante’s mask, which has disappeared from a museum in Florence, which sends them on to Venice and eventually Istanbul.
The virus was developed by a billionaire bio-nut job named Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster). He and his followers believe that over-population of the planet is imminent and will lead to the extinction of the human race. So, quite logically of course, they seek to short-circuit the havoc with, you know, mass genocide.
After dodging the bad guys and reuniting with a long-lost love now running the WHO, Langdon races to the thrilling conclusion in the cisterns of Istanbul where … wait for it … an orchestra is playing at an exclusive party. Here, the dastardly villains, the good guys out to save the world, and Langdon all converge for the surprise, thrilling conclusion.
Like all these “code” movies (The Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons, Indiana Jones, National Treasure, etc.), we hunt for the “McGuffin,” the object everyone is searching for in a movie. In this case, it’s the mask then the virus.
So is this movie any good? Well, the photography is fantastic while he action is fast-paced and the plot full of twists. Besides, Ron Howard makes good movies especially when Tom Hanks is in them. Thus, for non-stop action and the prototypical Dan Brown adaptation where the last clue rarely leads to the next one, Inferno is for you. But if you miss it, fear not: it will show up soon enough on video.