Inferno is the
third film in the Robert Langdon series, based on the books by best-selling
author Dan Brown, directed by Ron Howard. It stars Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones,
Ben Foster, Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, and Sidse Babett Knudsen. This film finds
Robert Langdon in a hospital struggling to remember things that happened in the
last couple of days. He then gets drawn into a situation where he has to solve
a puzzle based on art and history to discover a plague before it is released
killing a large portion of the world’s population. I enjoyed this series of
books (though I have yet to read Inferno)
and really liked Angels and Demons
(more on that on Tuesday!). This film was wildly disappointing for me and is
the worst of the series thus far.
Even in a film that disappoints me, there are some positives
and this film definitely has some. First, the performances. Tom Hanks is Tom
Hanks and that is never a bad thing. Though he isn’t working with great
material he still brings personality to the screen that made the film watchable
throughout. Felicity Jones was also really solid for most of the movie. I
really enjoyed the subtleties and shifts in her performance and it makes me
even more excited to see her in A Monster
Calls and Rogue One: A Star Wars
Story later this year.
Howard also has some cool shots in this film and some
fascinating design work. He has a lot of interesting historical monuments and
landmarks to capture and he does a lot of really cool things to peel back the
layers on them and make them look cool on screen. There are also some “vision”
elements in the film that depict elements from Dante’s Inferno that were really
neat. At times they felt incongruous with the film (and certainly do with the
series) but still had some cool art design that intrigued me.
Inferno fails
ultimately, unfortunately. For starters, it goes back to the
flashback/flash-out device that was a staple (and problem) in The DaVinci Code rather than focusing on
the forward moving narrative which made Angels
and Demons far and away the best film in the franchise. These sequences
really had me all over the place and made me exponentially less invested in the
main story. Additionally, the film is purposefully confusing throughout and,
unlike the other films in this series, I don’t think you can figure out the
next step like you could in those films. This is problematic in a mystery film
where figuring out the twists can be some of the fun and I think that this film
in some ways deprives you of that.
The film also goes for a very grandiose level that made the
whole underlying premise hard to buy into. Unlike in The DaVinci Code where the film gives you a clear reason to
distrust the government agents (or Angels
and Demons which goes the other way) this film just kind of expects you to
understand the fugitive, on-the-run nature from the get-go with really no
explanation. This took me out of the film quite a bit and I couldn’t empathize
with the choices Langdon was making. It also expands to a global level rather
than a single mystery which didn’t work as well when you’re thinking about this
random symbology professor gallivanting around the world.
The last thing I want to critique is how poorly the action
was shot in this film. It was extremely difficult to understand and to follow.
You don’t imagine that these films are tremendously action packed but even the
limited action contained within was poorly executed and that really hurt my
impression of this film.
Overall I found this film rather disappointing. It won’t be
the worst film I’ve seen all year but instead of continuing on the upward trend
the series was taking this is a serious step back and is, for me, the worst in
the series. I think they are probably going to be done and we’ll never see The
Lost Symbol adapted which is shame. That said, if it’s like this, I would
rather leave it alone.
Ryan’s Score: 3.5/10
No comments:
Post a Comment