Inferno (2016) [Blu-ray]
Action | Adventure | Crime | Drama | Mystery | Thriller

Tagline: Every clue will take him deeper

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.

Storyline: Academy AwardŽ winner Ron Howard returns to direct the latest bestseller in Dan Brown's Da Vinci Code billion-dollar Robert Langdon series, Inferno, which finds the famous symbologist (again played by Tom Hanks) on a trail of clues tied to the great Dante himself. When Langdon wakes up in an Italian hospital with amnesia, he teams up with Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), a doctor he hopes will help him recover his memories. Together, they race across Europe and against the clock to stop a madman from unleashing a global virus that would wipe out half of the world's population.

Reviewer's Note: Reviewed by Martin Liebman, January 20, 2017 Inferno is the third film based on a Dan Brown book starring Tom Hanks as the iconic Robert Langdon and directed by the equally iconic Ron Howard, following The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons. Inferno serves up much of the same in terms of approach and character construction and utilization, but it's also the darkest film in the series, tonally and thematically alike, pitting a weakened Langdon against his most difficult adversary and with the fate of the globe hanging in the balance. Beyond a few twists and turns and Langdon's knowledge as his most prominent weapon, it's a rather routine Thriller that works a bit better than average thanks to the source's quick speed and tale of interest, Langdon's superb development and Hank's performance, and Howard's firm grasp on what makes the series tick, both visually and structurally alike (despite the series' transition from film to digital). It's arguably the strongest film in the series, perhaps not the most fluent in terms of demonstrating Langdon's intellectual prowess (though admittedly by design) but certainly in terms of story's depth and Howard's craftsmanship.

Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) awakens in a Florence hospital, disoriented and unable to recall how he came to be in Italy or why he's in the hospital. His long-term memory is also failing him. His attending physician, Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), who has been a fan of his work since she was a child, tends to his injuries, which include a grazing bullet wound to the head. Before Langdon can get his bearings or recover from the pain, someone attempts an assassination. He and Sienna go on the run and return to her place. Langdon finds himself in mysterious possession of a miniaturized, makeshift projector that presents a slightly altered recreation of Dante's Inferno. Sienna, herself an amateur student of symbology, and a mentally weakened Langdon begin to piece together a series of clues that lead them to believe that a billionaire named Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), who preaches the dangers of overpopulation, has hatched a plan to wipe out the majority of the human race. Now, they must race against the clock to prevent armageddon on a global scale.

Mass murder versus extinction. The fundamental notions of right and wrong. What constitutes good and evil. And above all else, what is true and what is a lie? A complex web of social and environmental concern, mass murder, mass salvation, darkness, light, forgetfulness, fate, twists, and turns await the audience and Robert Langdon in this latest adventure. That's par for the course for Dan Brown's and Ron Howard's Langdon tales. Inferno is easily the darkest entry in the series, exploring the very notion of hell, one man's interpretation of it, and another man's vision of mankind's self-destruction into it. The film is much more apt to embrace darkness, distress, and uncertainty than its predecessors. It features a mentally weakened Robert Langdon, effectively taking away his greatest assets: his sharp mind, his quick thinking, his command of his intelligence and, more important, ability to put it all together and put it to use to battle evil and unearth the truth. In Inferno, the audience finds Robert Langdon at his most vulnerable, physically wounded and mentally off his game. It's a terrific little twist for the series and raises the stakes by a considerable margin, particularly considering the backdrop of a plot that pits the hero against a villain with a desire to wipe out the vast majority of human beings on the planet. All for the good of the species, of course.

Inferno's villain is straight out of James Bond. He's super-rich, has a way with words, and has cooked up a dastardly scheme to solve a problem with a solution that he's identified as necessary and good but that the rest of the world would see as fundamentally evil. He's a classic villain with a warped sensibility and sense of self, too, yearning preservation of the species by essentially killing it off. Standing in his way is Robert Langdon, an educated man more comfortable reading a relic than wielding a gun. Whats always been cool about Robert Langdon is that he's basically Bond and Bourne but with a sharper intellect who uses his smarts, not his fists or a gun, as his main weapon. He's capable enough to hold his own when he's pulled down into the physical fray, but he's sort of like Indiana Jones without the slick moves and physical prowess. And with his best asset removed, at least for part of the film, Inferno's stakes are only raised that much higher as the diabolical villain faces off against the weakened hero. The movie doesn't necessarily take full advantage of that contrast. Its big twist isn't hard to predict and its final outcome never seems in much doubt, but it's a relatively fun ride that shakes up the formula while still remaining true to the core. Here's hoping the Brown-Howard-Hanks collaboration has another movie in it; they seem to be getting a bit better with each entry, a rarity to be sure Hollywood.

Inferno doesn't quite capture the very real urgency of its plot, nor does it connect any dots to any real-world conspiracies in any meaningful, eye-opening ways, but it does do what the series does best: use basic knowledge to expand on itself and open up new ideas and interpretations of established truisms and understandings of the way things work. There are a couple of decent, though fairly transparent, plot twists, and Langdon's mental disarmament for parts of the film is a great device. The film moves well and sits as the best of what is currently the three Robert Langdon films, with, hopefully, at least one more to come. Sony's Blu-ray delivers superb video and audio. Supplements are fine, but a commentary track would have been icing on the cake. Recommended.

[CSW] -3.6- I am so glad that I didn't read the book first. Everyone who read the book was very disappointed. By not reading the book I was able to buy into the overpopulation premise, the culling the heard proposed solution and the, a bit farfetched, "Mission Impossible" styled idea of changing the reality perspective of the protagonist. All of which were needed to add drama (and a bit of horror), action, tension, and a Robert Langdon styled mystery, while still allowing room for two or three major plot twists. I did have a bit of a problem with the number of zealots embracing the hugely inhumane proposed solution to the problem, assuming they didn't know the actual outcome of the virus (as given in the spoiler below). So I actually enjoyed this movie in spite of the near genocide premise.

*** Spoilers Ahead ***

In the book, Langdon fails to prevent the virus from being released. But he learns, through the World Health Organization, that it's a vector virus, meaning that it will only trigger DNA modification to cause sterility in one-third of our planet's population. It's a grim, but realistic, ending to the book, and one that the movie jettisons. Ron Howard opts for a happy ending where Tom Hanks and his team reach the bomb and stop it from exploding. Problem solved.

[V5.0-A4.5] MPEG-4 AVC - No D-Box motion codes were available at the time of this rental although they are available now.


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