Inferno Review

Story: When famous symbologist Robert Langdon (played by Tom Hanks) wakes up in an italian hospital with amnesia, he teams up with Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) in the hopes of gaining his memories back. With the government hot on their tails Robert and Sienna race against time to stop a madman (Ben Foster) from releasing literal hell on earth. 

It's been 7 years since we last saw the cinematic appearance of the symbology professor Robert Langdon, too long in fact, and it has been with great excitement and glee that I was overjoyed to find a new follow-up has been unleashed.

 Based on the 2013 novel of the same name Inferno, the 4th book in the Robert Langdon series, we see a different side to Robert as events spiral out of his control and we are lost in the dark as he is. The difference, he's suffering from amnesia. Its an interesting change to a character who has been known to use his brain a lot. Another difference from previous instalments is the change in from religious undertones about the church and a focus on Dante's inferno and over-population.

Ron Howard returns to direct Tom Hanks in this third adaptation, I could never imagine one of these without Ron Howard. He gives these films a quality that you don't get in most franchise pictures. While these films are not oscar worthy, they are fun packed action thrillers that make you think.

I will start with the major changes this film adaptation makes, it does have a bit of a more hollywood feel as its gained controversy for its change to the ending. With past films/books Dan Brown's books have endings that leave you thinking. Ron Howard's adaptations do take some liberties with the material, Angels & Demons makes a small alteration having a character who died in the book survive in the film. The virus that is set to be unleashed is more of a threat in the film than in the book and while in the book its more tragic, the film sets itself with a more less darker ending. The change will have readers of the books up in arms. I, however, feel the change does not effect the story and does still provide an ending that can still be talked about.

Inferno is a very interesting and fascinating beast as it deals with the subject of over-population and how the main antagonist seeks to decrease it. The twist in the book is that prior to anyone's knowledge the virus had already been released before the events of the novel and there really was
nothing anyone could do. However, this version does not kill but upon release will make half the earth's population infertile. The overall new ending, making the virus more of a deadly infection and W.H.O being able to seal it before exposure, I find is even more tragic as without the said infection life on earth will end for us. It is true, our species has grown immensely with more animal species going extinct and the ever coming true fear that one day humans may go extinct the way of the dodo bird. Inferno's new ending is more tragic in the way that we just sweep the problem under the rug when something like this can have one of the worst impacts in human history.

Compared with the first two films Inferno has a less bigger budget, having being made on a 75 million, and it is the best thing to happen to this series. Why? The previous films used a fair amount of CGI and I felt this took you out of the movie. Its true that it had to be done in order for the sets to look like the locations in the books and a cast of highly well known talent (Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina, Ewan McGregor) In the end I found that the lower budget gave the film a more grounded, realistic feel. The cast (Felicity Jones, Ben Foster, Omar Sy, Irrfan Khan) is not as famous but is very talented and multi-cultural, diverse. One major aspect of the film that I loved was no CGI. This added to the overall realism. It made the film even more enjoyable in IMAX as the scenery is a wonder to behold.

One quick aspect of Inferno is that Hans Zimmer did return to score. I'll go into more detail about the score on my other site but will give a quick rundown of my feelings. I was not fond of the electronic aspect he took with Inferno and preferred the orchestral flow he did with Angels & Demons. Hans brings back themes from the first two films and does have tracks without the electronic tunes.

Inferno is a perfectly solid adaption, with the returns of Ron Howard as director, Tom Hanks as the lead, Hans Zimmer as the composer and Brian Grazer as producer. Cinematographer Salvatore Totino also returns, continuing to give the series its epic scope.

The sad news is this will probably be the final film in this franchise as even with the lower budget the film only made barely over 150 mill, the budget of Angels & Demons. Tom and Ron do a fantastic job though in closing the doors as we finally get some insight something we never learned, his love life. I was also pleased with the nightmare sequences as they were a perfect treat and another part of the film I had been looking forward to.

Goodbye Professor, you took us on a marvellous journey and as one great writer once said;

It is good to have an end to journey toward; but it is the journey that matters, in the end - Ernest Hemingway

3 1/2 out of 4