It starts off with promise. A man chased through the streets of Florence jumps to his death from a tower. Meanwhile Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) awakens in hospital, with no idea of he got there. How do the two connect? Why was Langdon shot?
Cue the race against time to find out the answers. The dead man is Betrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) a billionaire scientist obsessed with Dante’s Inferno. He created a plague to cure what he viewed as humanity’s overpopulation problem to be released on a timer in Istanbul.
This movie suffers from split personality disorder. It tries to be a mystery (Langdon following clues, and a mysterious third party), a thriller (the race to stop the plague), and a psychological thriller (Langdon suffering from a head wound, sorting out memory from fact) all in one movie. And it doesn’t work.
The camerawork is clunky, and shaky which is likely supposed to add pacing and a sense of urgency to the story. But it doesn’t. If anything it takes away from the beauty of the scenery, which Dan Brown goes to such distracting lengths to describe in his novel.
The dialogue slows it down. It’s more explanation of processes, and symbols than adding to the actual story. The acting isn’t good either. Hanks plays Langdon as the doddering old man at times and has zero chemistry with either female lead. There is no sense of a character he has played for three movies now.
Rating: 5/10: It’s not worth wasting your time.
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