Review: Inferno (12A)

Following the puzzling popularity of The Da Vinci Code and its sequel Angels and Demons, this latest instalment propels Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Hanks) on another ludicrous adventure.

After suffering an apparent gunshot wound to the head, Langdon wakes up in a hospital in Florence and, beset with hallucinatory visions of a plague doctors and devils straight out of Dante’s Inferno, he’s propelled on a high-speed chase through the medieval city.

Howard seems to have lost any sense of how to tell a story here: he just throws images and flash-cuts around in the presumed hope it will generate pulse-pounding excitement. It doesn’t, not even when it becomes apparent that Langdon will have to track down yet another cataclysmic doomsday device. Langdon’s chief companion this time out is a British doctor played by Felicity Jones, who really does do her best to make her character interesting, despite receiving no help from the script. The same goes for Hanks and it’s a sign, perhaps, of how dull a character Dan Brown has created that, after three films, one of the world’s most likeable movie stars can’t make him appealing.