Inferno

WARNING: This review is hidden because it reveals the content of the film.
Click here to show this review. I was highly anticipating “Inferno”. Granted, it was for all of the wrong reasons, but I happily sat down in the theater. The trailers sure made it look like it would be exciting. Unfortunately, the pleasant nuttiness of “Angels & Demons” is nowhere to be found and this latest chapter in the series, once again adapted from the novel by Dan Brown, is poorly written, absolutely ludicrous and a grind to get through.

Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) wakes up in a hospital room suffering from amnesia. While being attended to by Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), they are attacked by an assassin (Ana Ularu) Langdon has discovered a clue to the location of a supervirus dubbed “Inferno”, a plague that will wipe out half of the human population. He has no choice but to once again use his knowledge of history and symbols to discover and eliminate this threat to mankind!

This picture is a lot like “The Da Vinci Code”. It’s a convoluted thriller that isn’t all that exciting but features good actors and is spiced up –at least in theory- by throwing in a bunch of references to religious texts. If like me, you looked forward to seeing waves of blood crashing through windows and creepy figures shambling through the streets of Florence, you are going to be as disappointed as the readers of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child”. Those wild visions featured prominently in the trailers could have been exed out of the plot and made absolutely no difference. It's bamboozling. The special effects look good but the film could have been much more profitable if these had been eliminated. Perhaps test audiences fell asleep and these were used to joh them awake?

Once again, the plot follows Langdon on a quest that’s completely unrealistic. Without giving too much away, he and Dr. Sienna are following a series of clues, enigmas so cryptic and difficult to solve that no human being could figure them out while on the run and certainly not after suffering a head wound. I was ready to suspend my disbelief. I can buy that characters will make the right decisions and survive. In fact, that’s my favourite part of “Angels & Demons” but enough is enough. No one, I mean NO ONE would create a chain of riddles like the villain in this film, not unless it’s revealed that his real name is Edward Nigma. I know why we have all of these twists and turns into ancient buildings and references to ancient texts; it’s because when you really examine this story, it’s nothing special. It’s a bomb, a virus, a portal to hell, a whatever that our hero has to find and disarm. No one knows where it is but lucky for us, he’s found out about it in the nick of time and, if he can figure out the MacGuffin’s location before the clock strikes midnight, he’ll be able to save the world.

I’ll give the film credit for one thing. If there’s any element of it that I’ll swallow, it’s the main villain. You’ve got to be as nutty as the March Hare to want to unleash an ultra-plague on mankind and be able to justify it morally… but I can actually buy that. It’s everything else in the film that will make you want to dash your head against the seat in front of you. This is the kind of film that has not one, but two super secret organizations, that features needlessly elaborate schemes that require so many people to be at the right place at the right time, that there’s no way you could’ve planned it unless you had a crystal ball. Call it a personal pet peeve, but I absolutely hate it when people who have no business getting into fist fights do voluntarily. I’m sure you’ve seen it before where our hero has beaten all of the toadies and he’s arrived in the mastermind’s lair. What does the guy who spends all day working in a lab, coordinating armies and negotiating trade deals do? He puts up his fists and wouldn’t you know it? He’s a better hand-to-hand combatant than EVERYONE else. It makes no sense. In this movie, they do one better. When the guy heading the super secret organization (one of the two) finds out that things are going awry, he rolls up his sleeves, picks up a knife (because he doesn’t like guns I suppose? ) and decides to go out into the field alone. Isn’t that what you hire other people to do?

Everything I’m saying is probably making “Inferno” sound like a wonderful mess. It isn’t even that. This film is like trying to get up a flight of stairs, but with an old lady with a walker in front of you. It isn’t exciting. You know exactly who is going to end up where (the twists here are not the least bit surprising) and despite the efforts to jazz up the material with neat visuals and talented actors, it’s all a waste. I dare you to watch this film and tell me it’s good. I’m not going to check through every single movie I saw in 2016, but at the end of the year, I wager that “Inferno” will stand out as one of the biggest disappointments I’ve witnessed. (Theatrical version on the big screen, October 30, 2016)