Code to boredom

INFERNO

STARRING: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, BenFoster, Irrfan Khan

DIRECTOR: Ron Howard 

Genre: Mystery Thriller

Rating: PG-15

107 mins

Many will remember a time, around themid-2000s, when Dan Brown was the hottest author on the planet. The world was obsessed with The Da Vinci Code, with its intriguing brand of art-based riddlesthat became a phenomenon many considered gospel truth rather than fiction.

Fast-forward to the present day, and while Brown continues to trot out adventures starring symbologist Robert Langdon that sell by the truckload, the world has moved on and debunked the myth.

These bestsellers’ emphasis on culture andart history make for fun page-turners during a long haul flight, but it haslong since dawned on fans, and non-fans alike, that Brown’s wildly silly stories and their concealed clues won’t lead you to anything exciting or insightful about Christianity or the Renaissance any more than Platform 9 3/4at King’s Cross will lead you to a school for wizards.

The films, meanwhile, have never been anyof the above, and simply exist as below-average mysteries made incredibly frustrating by director Ron Howard’s assumption that every viewer has a degreein art history.

The joy to be found in this genre is to make the audience believe they can piece together clues themselves and solve it as they go along, something completely absent in Inferno as much as it was in Angels & Demons and Da Vinci.

In this instalment, Tom Hanks is back as Langdon in a role that completely wastes his unique penchant for wit and charm. Langdon is a know-it-all academic who is sort of a brainier, duller IndianaJones.

He awakens, after a very boring apocalypticdream-vision, in a Florentine hospital suffering from a head injury andamnesia. The film then casts him in the role of not only piecing together the upcoming puzzle in his usual way, but discovering his own role in it from the shattered remains of his memory. Because you always need a pretty girl to holdhands with as you run through European streets, he has help in the form ofdoe-eyed Sienna (Jones), a hospital doctor who is his intellectual match.

Langdon’s nemesis this time is bonkers biotech billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Foster), who has become obsessed with humanity’simminent demise through overpopulation. He also believes that the thinning-outprocess caused by The Black Death in the Middle Ages gave humanity the breathing space to create the Renaissance. So, to repeat the process, he hascreated a huge poison-bomb which will cull 50 per cent of the world’spopulation. As you do.

Having made such a thing, do you think he’djust detonate it? Don’t be daft, we have two hours’ worth of film reel to fill! Obviously a graduate from the Auric Goldfinger School of Expansive Torture Devices and Lasers Because a Bullet Is Too Mainstream, he hides the bomb before topping himself and leaving a trail of clues embedded in Botticelli’s illustrations of Dante. As you do.

The film is littered with similarly, laughable tropes. Assassins march implacably after Langdon, somehow having figured out the same clues as he does without his academic achievements and years poring over ancient texts. Even more hilarious is that the World Health Organisation boasts a paramilitary force that kicks doors down and has private jets standing by, which seems unlikely.

There are some positives. The locations areas beautiful as you imagine, with Langdon visiting almost every Florentine museum you can think of. It’s a surprise the film’s poster didn’t have anItalian Tourism Board-approved stamp on it, to be honest.

The subterranean climax is efficiently handled, finally with a dose of tension missing from the previous acts, while Hans Zimmer’s pulsing, synth-heavy score is a welcome, and rare, subversion ofexpectations.

Unfortunately, we’ve seen James Bond save the world from bio-weapons and quirky, nefarious baddies many times before, and swapping an Aston Martin for a Botticelli isn’t a significant upgrade.

Similarly, Bond has his charms and trademarks, so much so that even George Lazenby couldn’t mess it up (never mindConnery, Craig et al.) Here, we are stuck with probably the single most boring protagonist to ever anchor a major franchise and one which tests Hanks’s in nate likability and watch-ability to its absolute limits.

Ultimately, this film mired in the seventh level of Hell reaches for cinematic Heaven, but doesn’t even reach Purgatory.

Showing in: Cineco, Seef II, Wadi Al Sail,Saar, Dana Cineplex, Novo, Mukta A2

Rating: 2/5