Inferno | Tom Hanks lends Dan Brown's ludicrous Dante mystery straight-faced conviction

Inferno Tom Hanks Felicity Jones
(Image credit: Jonathan Prime)

Inferno Tom Hanks Felicity Jones

Concussed and amnesiac, Tom Hanks’ Harvard professor Robert Langdon wakes up in Florence to find himself in another of Dan Brown’s preposterous globe-trotting adventures in Inferno.

This time, Dante’s Divine Comedy provides the cryptic clues he needs to decode if he is to foil a fiendish plot to unleash a global plague. Cue lots of dashing about between picturesque tourist landmarks in Florence, Venice and Istanbul – all very handsomely filmed.

The plot is downright nonsense, of course. Brown couldn’t write a shopping list. But things get even more ridiculous following a whiplash-twist half way through. Still, Hanks lends proceedings straight-faced conviction, as do his classy co-stars, including Felicity Jones as the plucky English medic who comes to Langdon’s aid, Bollywood legend Irrfan Khan as the enigmatic chief of a private security company, and Borgen’s Sidse Babett Knudsen, here playing the formidable head of the World Health Organisation and providing the hero with a welcome age-appropriate love interest.

Certificate 15. Runtime 121 mins. Director Ron Howard

Inferno is available on Blu-ray, DVD & Digital Download from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RH2BD49sEZI

 

Jason Best

A film critic for over 25 years, Jason admits the job can occasionally be glamorous – sitting on a film festival jury in Portugal; hanging out with Baz Luhrmann at the Chateau Marmont; chatting with Sigourney Weaver about The Archers – but he mostly spends his time in darkened rooms watching films. He’s also written theatre and opera reviews, two guide books on Rome, and competed in a race for Yachting World, whose great wheeze it was to send a seasick film critic to write about his time on the ocean waves. But Jason is happiest on dry land with a classic screwball comedy or Hitchcock thriller.