INFERNO: Hanks-Irrfan inferno

Cast: Tom Hanks, Irrfan, Felicity Jones, Ben Foster

Rated: 6/10

Dan Brown’s movie adaptation of Da Vinci Codewas a washout — a slow spoiler which killed the constant edge the book kept you on. But Infernois just the opposite, confronting the book in edginess, thrill and momentum cheek by jowl.

For those who have read the book earlier, the film will bring old-time joy. For those who haven’t, Inferno, the film, will keep you rooted.

Tom Hanks, who couldn’t really save Da Vinci Code from slow, unmoving death, is at the centre of all the rolling excitement in Inferno. As the good old professor Langdon, he hits memory loss and wakes up in Florence all the way from America, not knowing why and how he arrived there overnight and why he is so full of visions of Dante’s hell.

The director has done well to keep the suspense and the chaos over a manic billionaire’s twisted attempt to kill off more than half the humanity to save the remaining to suit his illusions about a clean environment.

Hanks is brilliant and vintage stuff around the film though we all know how intensely insane the mystery can get when it flows out of Dan Brown’s pen.

The entire episode of trying to recreate the Black Plague of the Middle Ages, the puzzle stuck in Dante’s depiction of hell, the changes made in the landmark painting and the entire rigmarole to save humanity running against an impossible deadline, has been done up without a chink and you hold your breath through the film.

It is, thus far, Brown’s best laid out story on tape, not to be missed — for the pace, the story of course and the undying magic of Tom Hanks undertoned histrionics.

Other than Hanks, there is also our very own Irrfan who manages his meaty role with finesse. Though I had a niggle about his accent, his acting skills chase it away as he portrays the quizzical character of a secret sleuth organisation that serves its clients on a premium. But when the world is about to be destroyed by a deadly plague, he is all there to save it.

Though Hanks is the centrepiece of the film, Irrfan does his best on his own side table. 

Source: Sunday Pioneer, 16 October, 2016