Two stars. Rated PG-13, for action violence, dramatic intensity and brief profanity
By Derrick Bang
I’ve no idea why this series
continues to be popular; each entry is sillier than the one before.
Dan Brown may be able to maintain
reader credibility in a lengthy novel — Inferno
runs a self-indulgent 609 pages — but director Ron Howard’s film adaptations
are no more sensible than the old Perils
of Pauline silent movie serial.
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| A series of arcane, art-related clues eventually lead Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) to the fabled "death mask" of Italian poet Dante Alighieri. But what has this to do with a potential world-wide plague? And do we care? |
David Koepp’s screenplay for Inferno reduces the plot to little more
than a race-race-race against time,
occasionally alleviated when famed university symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom
Hanks) pauses for breath in order to solve another arcane riddle locked within
a famed piece of artwork.
On top of which, attempting to
make sense of the conspiracy-laden supporting characters is beyond the ability
of mere mortals. “Duplicitous” doesn’t begin to cover the crosses,
double-crosses and triple-crosses in this ludicrous plot, which quickly
devolves into a tiresome guessing game.
Lessee ... first they’re all bad
guys. Then some of the bad guys become good guys. Oh, wait, no; that one was
bad all along. And that one was good.
Until turning bad again.
All with poor Langdon caught in
the middle.
It quickly becomes impossible to
believe — or care about — any of these people. All we can do is wait for the
murk to clear, accompanied by tediously complicated explanations, so matters
can build to a staggeringly inept climax, and we can go home.
Brown may have sold all this meandering
nonsense to his readers — full disclosure prompts acknowledging that I’m not
among the faithful — but Koepp can’t begin to distill it into a two-hour film.
We can’t help wondering, as loyalties finally
become apparent in the third act, why Certain Parties didn’t simply ask for Langdon’s help, rather than
concocting such an elaborate means of “forcing” his assistance.
What makes Howard’s Dan Brown
adaptations even more exasperating is their insistence on taking such stuff and
nonsense so seriously. Robert
Langdon’s profession and expertise make him a close cousin to Harrison Ford’s
Indiana Jones, but director Steven Spielberg wisely turns those chapter-play
adventures into larkish thrill rides, with plenty of winking and nudging.
Brown’s style, on the other hand
— reproduced here by Howard and Koepp — always collapses under the weight of
its own pomposity.
