Tom Hanks returns as Harvard symbologist, Professor Robert Langdon, in this third installment of a Dan Brown novel turned movie.
In Inferno, Langdon must hunt down clues to the location of a virus that could kill billions of people. A “madman”, who sees overpopulation as the biggest evil in the world, created this virus and feels the only way to help is to cut the population drastically in one swoop by unleashing this new virus that will effectively kill over half of the world’s population.
The movie is disjointed, beginning with Langdon waking up in a hospital in Florence, Italy with no memories of how he got there or even why he is in Italy. Then he becomes the target of an assassin and with the help of a doctor, Felicity Jones, he escapes to her apartment. There they begin to put the pieces of his memory back together. Why is someone out to kill him? And why does he mysteriously have a vial that only opens with his thumbprint?
Once he opens the vial he sees a map of Dante’s Inferno and discovers there are additional clues. The two follow those clues from one location to another with two teams hot on their trail. Who is after him and what is he looking for? When his memory clears it becomes even more important for him to find the location of the virus. The clues lead him from Florence to Venice to Istanbul.
Inferno is an intense story, however a bit disjointed in the way it is presented. The beginning is confusing, yet it does come together a little way into the film. Fans of the book will undoubtedly enjoy seeing the character on screen and in the actual locations in Italy, Turkey, and Hungary.
This is the third film in the Robert Langdon franchise. In 2006 The Da Vinci Code (undoubtedly the best film in the series) introduced audiences to the character that had garnered the attention of readers of the best selling novel. Then in 2009 Angels & Demons hit the screen. And now, Inferno. In each of these stories, Langdon is called on to use his encyclopedic knowledge of history, symbols, and landmarks to solve mysteries that could ultimately be catastrophic to humanity. Accolades have gone to composer Hans Zimmer for the first two movies.
Inferno is rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, disturbing images, some language, thematic elements and brief sensuality.
