Inferno Review – Disappointing Dante

Directed by: Ron Howard

Starring: Tom Hanks, Ben Foster, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, Sidse Babett Knudsen

Rating: 12

Runnning time: 122 minutes

Release Date: 14th October 2016

INFERNO is the new film from Ron Howard, starring Tom Hanks, continuing the saga of The Da Vinci Code and Angels&Demons, based on the book series by best-seller, Dan Brown. The story sees us following ROBERT LANGDON (Tom Hanks) as he wakes up in hospital from a serious head injury, with little memory of what had happened and where he is. He quickly falls into the middle of a plot to release a home made plague into the world, wiping out half of the human population. To stop this from happening, LANGDON must travel across the globe, following a trail of puzzles in his path. 

This is a very pretty film, the cinematography beautifully encapsulates each of the European cities with wonder, giving a sense of amazement as you pan across each location from a birds eye view.

From the get go, there is nothing new about INFERNO that wasn’t already seen in the previous two movies of the franchise, which is a huge let down following the 8-year gap between entries. The main attraction of these stories has always been the puzzles and following along with the character, gaining the rewarding feeling of having put all the pieces together in your own mind, INFERNO robs you of that. The writing is so incredibly rushed that you aren’t even sure what exactly the characters are even trying to do at any given time, creating cinematic chaos out of nothing at all, making for a very hard to watch experience.

Being hard to watch doesn’t just stop at the moment to moment content because, unfortunately, this is one of the most poorly written movies of the year. Audiences are dragged through a non-sensical story of coincidence and happenstance that continuously grind you to a fault so you can take a second to think of just how ridiculous this is. LANGDON consistently makes leaps of logic that come out of thin air, for the sole purpose of the characters changing location.

Adding insult to injury, this cast of A-list, incredible actors are seemingly there just to get paid, phoning in performances and not even trying. There are no likeable characters here, nobody to relate to and just generally horrible people. Tom Hanks, despite being one of the greatest actors of all time, gives such a dry performance as LANGDON, although, it must be said that it is not entirely his fault, LANGDON is just a completely unlikeable human being. Hanks has no time or reason to shine, and this film is severely lacking in the charisma and charm he usually brings to the screen. HARRY SIMS (Irrfan Khan) is the one saving grace to this movie’s cast of characters. He’s funny, charming and mysterious, having worked both sides of the plots conflict, and I enjoyed every minute he was on screen. Those minutes were, however, very few and far between.

The score, composed by Hans Zimmer, did exactly what it needed to do, setting the mood for each scene, but was completely forgettable and, if asked, I would not be able to come up with a single piece of music from the film.

All in all, I was very disappointed with this film. Criminal misuse of a stellar cast, horrible writing of coincidental scenarios and a completely forgettable score to stitch it all together. This is not a movie to rush out and see, more of a catch it on TV one-day kind.

Verdict

This movie is out in cinemas October 14th, 2016

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