By Brett Blake The latest movie to adapt Dan Brown’s Robert Langdon series of novels is here, and the bottom line is that INFERNO is not very good. It tells a ridiculous story with a ponderous tone, and it criminally wastes the talents of multiple very fine actors. Director Ron Howard has more hits than misses in his filmography, but INFERNO is not bad so much as its terrifically unimpressive. Dropping us right into the story, INFERNO begins with Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) in an Italian hospital with no memory of how he got there. With the help of a nurse, Sienna (Felicity Jones), Langdon escapes from assassins and finds himself plunged into a mystery involving Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), a recently-deceased billionaire who may (or may not!) have engineered a biological plague to stave off looming problem of the planet’s overpopulation. Strung through this plot are the works of the famous Italian poet Dante Alighieri, providing a backdrop for Langdon’s knowledge of history to come into play as he and Sienna try to stay one step ahead of multiple sinister parties, all with seemingly opposed agendas. The degree to which INFERNO goes to preposterous places cannot be overstated. The storyline is absolutely crazy, and it culminates in a finale sequence that will seem conventional to most (and which is a major departure from the novel’s conclusion). None of this is a problem per se, but the devil is in the details, as they say; it’s the execution of these ideas where things start to fall apart. There’s no sense of fun, no playfulness, no winking of the eye to let the audience know it’s okay to laugh along with the movie instead of at the movie. Everything is taken so seriously, so at-face-value, that the inherent absurdity really rises to the surface. What was likely an attempt to create an ominous tone and to set up real stakes has the unintended consequence of rendering many of the plot turns unintentionally silly. There’s an overblown, portentous quality that you might think would fit the subject matter of a plague poised to wipe out the world population, but that’s such a grandiose notion that it really requires a deft touch to pull off. Unfortunately, director Howard and screenwriter David Koepp, neither of whom are strangers to more playful approaches to material, have chosen to keep things sullen and moody when the angle really needed to be operatic and inventive. Only Irrfan Khan, in the one great performance of the movie, brings the sort of attitude and spark that the film really could have used more of. And look, I’m not somebody who’s averse to the “Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon” series; I more-or-less enjoyed the previous two movies. The problem here is that, in its attempt to reach for the sort of pseudo-gravitas the last two movies had (by virtue of being explicitly about Catholic Church intrigue, something that naturally has weight), INFERNO becomes a pretty dour, joyless affair. While it’s certainly possible some could be entertained - in an ironic way - by the misplaced faux-seriousness of its wacky mystery plot, that’s not my preferred method of getting pleasure out of a film. I would rather meet a movie on its own terms and have it work for me as the filmmakers intended. That is, unfortunately, not possible with INFERNO. One of the most disappointing elements of INFERNO is the score from Hans Zimmer. His scores for THE DA VINCI CODE and ANGELS & DEMONS are two of his very best, with frequently gorgeous and ethereal passages, as well as ultra-dark, atmospheric, and moody sections. One might hope INFERNO would be more of the same, but one would be wrong; Zimmer has transported us back to his electronics-heavy sound of the 1990s, and the result is easily one of his least impressive scores in recent memory. Pounding drum loops, grating synthetic flourishes, and minimal thematic content are the things Zimmer has brought to the tale this time, and I can’t imagine this would be a score one would want to listen to outside of the movie. There is some basic enjoyment to be derived from certain aspects, of course. The movie looks fantastic, and director Howard shoots the hell out of the Italian locations. Pacing is top-notch, and the movie rarely stops its propulsive drive forward... though that may be because the filmmakers didn’t want to give the audience any time to think through how nutty and outlandish the storyline actually is! Also, though the plot itself is overly complicated and labyrinthine, there is some merit in the idea of constructing a wannabe blockbuster in a way that hinges on history, art, and religion; those are subjects that are admirable for their inclusion, and I guess if INFERNO gets someone in the audience to actually go pick up the works of Dante, then that’s a positive. That’s not enough for me, though. In the end, INFERNO is an unfortunate misfire.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Archives
January 2023
Categories
All
|