[yasr_overall_rating]
When Robert Langdon wakes up in an Italian hospital with amnesia, he teams up with Dr. Sienna Brooks, and together they must race across Europe against the clock to foil a deadly global plot.
Tom Hanks’ Robert Langdon is a thinking man’s hero. He analyzes a situation, comes to understand it and then resolves it as quickly as possible. Comparable to Jack Ryan, a fellow analyst who just happens to also be trained in physical combat, while Langdon does most certainly endure his fair share of running, jumping, and falling, fighting is a word clearly not in his vocabulary. He will do everything in his power to avoid physical confrontation and that means having to constantly be one step ahead of his nemesis at all times.
After the events of “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons,” Professor Langdon wakes up in an Italian hospital suffering from amnesia. No sooner has he awoken and met his doctor, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), than the bad guys come shooting up the ward looking for him. Initially reluctant to help him for fear of her life, she quickly realizes that her life is also in danger when one of her fellow doctors is gunned down right in front of her. They escape the hospital and she takes him back to her apartment and while Langdon is going through his personal belongings, he discovers a Faraday pointer, a miniature image projector with a map of hell based on Dante’s Inferno. As his memory comes back a piece at a time, he and Sienna conclude that this particular image of Dante’s Inferno has been tampered with and ascertain that the new clues warn them of a biological weapon so great, that once detonated, could wipe out over half of the earth’s population.
With the World Health Organization, the police and a group of mercenaries behind their every move, Langdon and Sienna must keep moving throughout Italy, eventually making their way to Turkey, where they must both follow the clues laid out for them within the map before the bomb’s detonation. Director Ron Howard proves adept at making these kinds of thrillers but after you leave the theater and reflect back on everything you’ve just witnessed, even though the movie entertains on many levels, you comprehend that overall, the film is a generic retread of much more satisfying and thrilling movies. Tom Hanks and Felicity Jones carry the movie as the story requires huge leaps of faith and only because of their star power, Mr. Hanks in particular, does the film work.
Like James Bond and Jason Bourne, I find it refreshing for a thriller to be shot overseas as opposed to the U.S. I’m not saying that thrillers set in the U.S. are less effective, it’s just that the majority of the are so when one like this comes along, it really is a breath of fresh air. Out of the three films to date adapted from Dan Brown’s books, I would have to say the second in the series, “Angels & Demons,” is still my personal favorite, with “Inferno” a close second. If you just want to get out of the house for a few hours and be entertained, then “Inferno” has all the ingredients you are looking for, just don’t place them too near the fire.
In theaters Friday, October 28th
