Inferno

Dan Brown's literary professor/detective Robert Langdon drew controversy when he debuted on-screen in The Da Vinci Code. He didn't get those when he returned in Angels & Demons. Now, seven years after his last history mystery, Langdon has returned to theaters in Inferno. Once again, he's played by Tom Hanks and directed by Ron Howard.

The movie opens with radical billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) jumping to his death in Florence. Langdon comes in next, when he finds himself in a hospital in the same city all roughed up. He doesn't know how he got there and he has visions of literal Hell on Earth. An assassin comes gunning for him, so he escapes with his attending physician, Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones). They hide in her apartment, where they find a faraday pointer in his possession. The pointer shows them Hell ... or rather, Boticelli's interpretation of Dante's version of it.

Zobrist left behind a super-virus, Inferno, to deal with overpopulation. The Boticelli painting is the first clue for our heroes' scavenger hunt. Various factions, from the WHO to the shady Consortium, are after the virus. Langdon and Sienna have to find it before Zobrist's followers let it loose.

Overall, the film runs at a nicely paced 121 minutes. It jumps into the action quickly and rarely lulls. The historical details didn't bog down the story; in fact, they were nicely told. The threeway for the Inferno muddles the plot a bit with all the names and factions to remember. Harry Sims (Irrfan Khan), head of the Consortium, turns out to be a good guy and dies too quickly. WHO head Elizabeth Sinskey (Sidse Babett Knudsen) turns out to have a past with Langdon that's barely explained. The closest I felt the story straining the most was when a WHO agent was revealed to be a bad guy.

The visual effects and the sound team get the best notices. The visual effects team conjur up some ghastly images for Langdon's nightmares, such as people with their heads on backwards, while the sound team makes Langdon's sensory overloads appropriately unbearable. Hans Zimmer, meanwhile, provides a memorable action-packed soundtrack. The film's locales all look nice thanks to the production design and cinematography.

Inferno is an adequate cinematic return for Robert Langdon. It's been ages since I saw the last two, but this film didn't hold that against me. Its history mystery tour is a self-contained action piece. They did enough right in this belated sequel to earn themselves another follow-up. Apparently, the third Langdon novel, The Lost Symbol, won't be it.