INFERNO

Inferno reunites Director, Ron Howard, and vintage wine Hollywood A-lister, Tom
Hanks, in the third installment of author, Dan Brown’s cryptic symbology and
puzzlecalyptic novels adapted to movie trilogy. It has been 10 & 7 years
respectively since The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons were released.

In the Da Vinci Code, the goal was to destroy Christianity by revealing the real
truth about the Holy Grail. In Angels & Demons, that ambition was narrowed
down to destroying the Vatican City with a stolen vial of antimatter. In Inferno,
the ambition assumes a grander scale; the annihilation of half of mankind via an
engineered plague.

A crazed Dante-obsessed Billionaire geneticist, Bertrand Zobrist (played by Ben

Foster), worried about the exponential growth in the world’s population and the
apocalyptic consequence it portends given the limited resources available to all of
mankind, comes up with a solution taken right out of the Malthusian playbook for
population control.

Long before Zobrist came up with his crazed idea, Rev. Father Thomas Malthus
had propounded the theory of exponential population growth. Whilst Rev.
Malthus had urged a moral restraint in curbing population growth, Zobrist was
partial to a more radical approach; a deliberate curbing on an apocalyptic scale by
the release of a virus that would decimate half of mankind.

Inferno opens with Zobrist being pursued by unidentified assailants. They corner
him atop a bell tower in Florence, Italy. But rather than give himself up, he jumps
to certain death. From thereon out, Inferno’s fast-paced race to resolution begins
with barely any room spared for a breather.

Inferno follows the formula of its predecessors; a mystery death opener, a

barrage of rubik’s cube puzzle-type conspiracy theories, a run around chase
through touristy locations, a eureka-moment denouement with a twist no one
saw coming and then the final resolution culminating in the rescue of humanity
from destruction.
Tom Hanks reprises his Harvard Expert Symbologist, Prof. Robert Langdon but this
time with a noticeable absence of the zing he brought to the character in the
previous two installments. This could be attributed to the ennui induced by the
memory-distorting serum injected into him in the movie. Or perhaps, this could
be natural lethargy in Tom Hanks from having played this character in two
previous installments.

As a crazed Billionaire Geneticist with an Abrahamic God complex, Ben Foster

gave a mildly impressive performance. I am still smarting from his impressive turn
in Hell or High Water. So, I will blame the lack of a more impressive performance
in Inferno on the overall lack of fire power in the movie (pun intended).

The best part of Inferno was Irrfan Khan as Harry “The Provost” Sims, the head of
a security organization called The Consortium. In Inferno, he brought that
indescribable but recognizable Khanish feel to his character. It’s there in the
bulgy-looking eyes that arrest your attention. The subtle but powerful presence
that announces that you are experiencing the commanding aura of a thespian
who knows his craft.

He has got a leading man aura and the fiendish deliciousness of a movie villain.
And that voice; it speaks of self-assuredness and an awareness of one’s gift as an
actor. He has got a range that will dance comfortably through a field of lilies in
Bollywood and effortlessly steal the show in Hollywood. Irrfan Khan is one of
Bollywood’s gifts to Hollywood (along with Priyanka Chopra and Shah Rukh Khan).

Inferno had the trappings of a suspenseful mystery thriller, enough to leave a

tingling sensation in your feet as the movie plot unfolded but it all seemed too
hurried. The puzzles were more expected than surprising, and the immediacy of
their resolution just detracted from the shock factor.

The twist left you with a “but of course!” instead of a “what? I didn’t see that
coming!”. Like its predecessors, the heightened expectations built up from the
intro just fizzled out to a whimper at the end. Inferno had all the ingredients to
start a conflagration but was only able to achieve that singular blue flame that
shoots out when you flip a cigarette lighter.