Ron Howard brings our favorite Robert Langdon back on screen.
It has been some time since a Dan Brown book came on film, Angels and Demons being in 2009 and The Lost Symbol somehow not making the cut. So here we have, Inferno.
Keeping the huge Indian audiences in mind, we have our very own Irrfan Khan play the character of the Provost, Mr. Sims. This also being the reason the film has had an early release in India, to avoid the huge Diwali clash.
Set in Florence, to hunt clues based on Dante’s famous painting Inferno, with limited time before a deadly virus destroys humanity, Robert Langdon has to deal with a bunch of corrupt officials, the World Health Organisation and a sinister organisation who will go to any lengths to protect their client.
Hanks is efficient in his third outing as Langdon. Somehow he doesn’t seem as invested in the character as he was earlier. Felicity Jones is purely okay.
Irrfan Khan is good. It is nice to see him break the mold of being cast in non-ethnic characters. Honestly he is the best thing in the film. His one liners and dead pan expressions, make Provost so much more likable.
Not wanting to sound clichéd, but the movie does no justice to the book. The impact of various revelations is lost in the hurry of trying to run from one place to another, something which was done brilliantly in Angels. Poor editing too, leaves you wanting. Somehow the entire treatment is more like Da Vinci Code, where in spite of having so much material in hand, they couldn’t translate the impact on screen. That is where the film fails.
In short, it becomes a one-time watch for the Brown/ Hanks / Irrfan fans, but will leave all of them kinda dissatisfied in the end.
Rating: 2.5/ 5
By: Yusuf Poonawala
