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Review: Even Tom Hanks can't save 'Inferno'
In this file image released by Sony Pictures, Tom Hanks, left, and Felicity Jones appear in a scene from "Inferno."
GUS HUNNINGHAKE @gushunninghake
Associated Press
ten years ago, Columbia Pictures released "The Da Vinci Code," based on Dan Brown's bestselling novel of the same name and starring Tom Hanks as Professor Robert Langdon. The mystery thriller had a generic storyline, no compelling performances and ran about 20 minutes too long. However, the film made back six times its budget at the box office, leading Columbia to release a sequel, "Angels and Demons," three years later. The film flowed like a carbon copy of the first, with nothing interesting or different enough to call for a 138 minute runtime. However, it made triple its budget at the box office, allowing another sequel to go into production. Though it took seven years to make, "Inferno" once again tries to adapt Dan Brown's controversial source material into a film that's worth viewers' time and money.
"Inferno" is directed by Ron Howard and once again stars Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon, who wakes up in a hospital in Italy with head trauma and minor retrograde amnesia. When the police try and kill him, Langdon flees with Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), a doctor who helps him escape. While hiding with Brooks, Langdon finds a Faraday pointer in his coat pocket, which shows a rearranged, manipulated version of Botticelli's "Map of Hell," which is based on Dante's "Inferno," an epic poem describing the various levels of hell itself. Langdon discovers that the manipulations help lead to the location of a man-made virus meant to kill half of the world's population. With WHO and zealots on his tail, Langdon must find the pathogen before it detonates and sends the world to hell.
Sadly, this film is no different from its predecessors in quality. Tom Hanks, one of the best working actors, is about the only person in the film that looks as if he's giving his best effort. Felicity Jones gives a pretty flat performance, with nothing
compelling or interesting about her character until the start of the third act. Even then, those interesting traits are squandered by a generic character are that ends with an unsurprising bang. Ben Fostereq lacks any complexity as Bertrand Zobrist, one of multiple antagonists in this film, and only has about 10 minutes of screen time. Overall, there are no standout performances, even with Tom Hanks' best efforts to portray an intriguing character.
In the end,
"Inferno" lacks anything worth watching"
These poor performances are partially due to screenwriter David Koeppcq, who is responsible for the screenplays for all three films in the Robert Langdon franchise. Koepp, who is also known
for writing "Jurassic Park" (1993), "Spider-Man" (2002) and "Premium Rush" (2012), fails to use any compelling dialogue to propel Langdon and others through the narrative. Author Dan Brown is partially responsible for the lack of complex characters, but Koepp does have a responsibility to write conversations within the story that are more than just flat and boring exposition pieces. Instead, Langdon walks around in almost every scene being told exactly what he needs to hear to figure out the unfolding mystery, which makes Koepp's dialogue dull and unoriginal.
Ron Howard's directing is disappointingly boring and lacks any sure-handedness. Unlike his previous efforts, which include "Apollo 13" (1995), "A Beautiful Mind" (2001) and "Rush" (2013). Howard uses no effort to make this film look or feel thrilling or mysterious. Each scene looks no different than the last, and every shot is
framed and executed with haphazard design and composition. Instead of using shots with various focal and durational lengths, Howard keeps the camera at a pretty static distance from the objects in frame, adding to the story's dullness. He throws out all of his unique tendencies as a director to put together a boring film that feels like it could've been directed by any made-for-TV film director in the business.
In the end, "Inferno" lacks anything worth watching. It's sloppily produced, poorly acted — save for Tom Hanks — written without gusto and directed without any edge. This film proves itself to be part of a franchise whose continued success is determined not by its quality or ability to entertain, but by how easily it earns back its budget in theaters. This is one of the worst films of the year.
- Edited by Cody Schmitz
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