Review: Inferno

What would Hitchcock, lover of MacGuffins, have made out of Inferno, which is essentially one big MacGuffin from start to finish? There's a plague, created by a billionaire not particularly pleased by the world's overpopulation, and whose location may be pinpointed by deciphering a series of clues involving Dante's vision of hell. "Seek and find" is the refrain that reverberates through this film but, in fact, what is sought and found is very much beside the point.

Producer Brian Grazer, director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks are all back on board for this third adaptation of Dan Brown's best-selling franchise featuring academic super sleuth Robert Langdon. At this point, any or all of them could sleepwalk through the proceedings - one could argue that they were already slumming with the series' previous entries, The Da Vinci Code and Angels & Demons - but it's harder than it appears to spin some semblance of gold from the straw that is Brown's material. This is not a knock on populist entertainment nor is it a knock on Inferno, but rather an acknowledgement that genuine effort is required for something that many may deem a simple and simpleminded work. Hitchcock had an unerring ability to elevate his material but that material, stripped to its core, was lowbrow at best.

Which is a long and tangential way of saying that Howard, at his third time behind the helm, has made a very satisfying something out of a very familiar nothing. There's an energy to Inferno, an almost brusque briskness that was missing in action in the previous films. The urgency of the narrative is still lagging - for all the crowds that suffocate almost every frame of the movie, one feels nary a twinge at their impending doom - but the execution compels. Perhaps because Howard focuses less on the mystery and more on the players. Movement is key here, whether it's the speed of thought as the minds of Langdon and his latest sidekick Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones) dash to solve the trail of clues in order to track the virus, or the continual convergence of the assorted figures who may help or harm Langdon.

Hanks' Langdon has always been the least interesting of the film's characters - which is not to say that Hanks does not interest as Langdon - and Howard has always been smart to cast (and sometimes waste) an array of international actors in supporting roles. The first film included Audrey Tatou, Jean Reno and Ian McKellen, the second had Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgaard and Nikolaj Lie Kaas, but this current roster is arguably the one that makes the strongest impression. Jones sparks well with Hanks and their banter often recalls the one between Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll in The 39 Steps (Hitchcock again! In fact, Inferno is a veritable wonderland of Hitchcock references). Omar Sy, though not given very much to do as one of the leading manhunters, cuts a very striking presence as does Ana Ularu as the carabinieri with a kill order against Langdon.

Best of all are Irrfan Khan as the enigmatic head of a shadowy organisation whose allegiance is ever shifting, and Sidse Babett Knudsen as World Health Organization leader Elizabeth Sinskey, whose connection to Langdon is both professional and personal. Both Khan and Knudsen are so deliciously riveting that their fates are the only ones that matter during the exciting finale that takes place in an underground labyrinth with its blood-coloured lagoon and innumerable pillars, one of which bears the plague that is waiting to be unleashed.

Do we need a fourth installment? Not really. But it would be worth it to see the return of Knudsen's Elizabeth Sinskey.

Inferno

Directed by: Ron Howard

Written by: David Koepp; based on the novel by Dan Brown

Starring: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Irrfan Khan, Omar Sy, Ben Foster, Ana Ularu