Inferno - 2016

Not bad but let me say, a bit boring, what with the fact that Langdon had been drugged and couldn’t remember anything for a while, and whatnot. The surprising switch towards the end leaves (as it often happens) many doubts, does it really make sense now? Not ‘really’, no. 

The idea was interesting though. A millionaire, Zobrist, says that Earth is doomed because there are too many people on it, and the population number is escalating at an incredible rate too, so he thinks that in order to save the world he has to kill (almost) everyone. How? By creating a new, very powerful virus that will infect 90% of the population, take or give a million people. 

Details: Zobrist is being chased, and he kills himself rather than be captured by those men. 

Langdon is in Firenze, he wakes up in a hospital bed, his head hurts and he has crazy vision of death and hell on Earth. The young and brilliant doctor tending to his injuries is Sienna Brooks - wow, young and brilliant doctors tend to escape from Italy or otherwise work privately, how come she chose to come working here instead?

When a female carabiniere comes towards them shooting a doctor, Sienna locks the room’s door - yeah, locks, but he’s feeling so badly he doesn’t understand what’s going on, and honestly what this the fact that this is a movie, I wasn’t sure if some details were done on purpose or not, so I went along with that too. Sienna helps Langdon escape from there and takes him to her house. He has a head injury and can’t remember a lot of things, specially what happened the last few days. She has a recording of the things he kept repeating when he was taken to the hospital (why??). He is sad because he doesn’t have his wristwatch, he says it was important, a memory of his parents. He access his email and sees a mail of a friend saying they’re after him too now... His clothes are all dirty, bloody, so she gives him new clothes she had in the house. A curious thing is in his jacket pocket, a biocapsule that can only be opened with his fingerprint (and she knows what it is. Do ordinary hospital doctors know what secret bio-stuff look like?). There’s a pointer inside, a sort of projector; the ‘decorations’ outside refer to the plague. The projection shows a map of Dante’s Inferno with a few things added.  A clue they have to follow. Some letters, a phrase in English and the name Zobrist, so they google him and what do you know, they immediately find the right video to find out what they need in a few seconds and realise that Zobrist created a new plague.

They call the Embassy, but they see that it’s the same assassin from before who’s coming to him, so they escape. Another team is also after him, the same people that were after Zobrist: they are from the W.H.O.

The assassin receives now the order to kill Langdon (what was she doing before?). They go to Palazzo Vecchio, there in Firenze, where Marta remembers him and helps him (and who thinks they are a couple, quite annoyingly if you ask me, is it possible that a man and a woman can’t be seen together without people thinking they’re sleeping together? Come on, it’s been quite a few years now since men&women talking meant something serious...

They discover that a mask of Dante has been stolen, and watching surveillance videos it turns out that Langdon and his friend stole it, then those chasing him arrive again so they escape again (but Langdon promises to bring it back).

When they were in Sienna’s apartment, Langdon checked his emails and found one of his friend with a clue, a passage from Dante’s Paradise, so now Sienna googles it and they understand the mask is at the Battistero. To go there, Sienna is ‘forced’ to kill the fake carabiniere sent to kill them. She works for a sort of secret organisation that worked for Zobrist. The boss was instructed to make public a video after a certain date, but given the recent troubles he decided to watch the video immediately, and he discovers that Zobrist planned a genocide and it will happen in twelve hours, so he decides to go to Firenze to do something about it. 

In the waters of the Battistero Langdon and Sienna find the mask with some words written under it, then they are approached by Bouchard; he says he’s working for W.H.O. and he’s the one who went to him asking for his help, and Bouchard tells him that Elizabeth is working against them aiming to find the virus and sell it. The three of them take a train to Venezia, but on the train Langdon remembers that it was Elizabeth who went to him, so Bouchard was lying. 

Sims, the boss of that organisation, now approaches Elizabeth telling her everything of his organisation and sort of offering his help since he states that he can locate Langdon more quickly. 

Langdon and Sienna reach Venezia, and Langdon realises that he made a mistake, because they actually need to go to Istambul, not Venezia. Bouchard finds them so they escape again, but then Sienna tells him that Zobrist was not a murderer, she loved him and wants to complete his mission (Langdon is wearing his clothes unknowingly). Sienna leaves him behind to go to Istambul alone, and Langdon is taken by Bouchard. 

We see that Sienna and Zobrist loved each other, and she was always good at following clues. He didn’t tell her where the virus was right away so not to put her in danger, but told her he’d leave clues for her in case he didn’t make it himself. 

Sims arrives to ‘save’ Langdon by killing Bouchard. Sims reveals that he’s the one who drugged him. He was never hit or shot on the head, he was drugged to lose his memory. The hospital was fake too, it was all planned so that he would trust Sienna. All was planned so that he would solve the enigma (Sims smashes Bouchard’s face and then complains that this is not his best work, but for the Italians it will be enough... I should feel insulted maybe, but he’s probably right, so...). Sienna went to Sims after Zobrist’s death knowing they were working for him, and thought of using him after Elizabeth contacted him. So things are like this, when Bouchard gave Elizabeth the pointer (probably finding it on Zobrist’s corpse after his death) and she went to him so that he could decipher it, and Elizabeth put it into a capsule that would only open with his fingerprints, so they were forced to ensure his help. But then Sienna went rogue and that’s where troubles started for his organisation. 

They reunite with Elizabeth and head to Istambul. She tells him that Zobrist once approached her asking for a secret plan to sterilised people through water but she opposed of course, so he started on his plague plan. He was with her when Zobrist’s men took him away. 

Langdon and Elizabeth once loved each other - well, they were probably once in a relationship, but they still love each other, it’s just that he couldn’t ask her to give up Ginevra and she couldn’t ask him to give up Cambridge and that’s how it ended.

Once in Istambul, Sienna approaches a professor who follows her same mission, and they join forces. The plague is in a plastic bag under water, underneath a submerged palace in Istambul, or something like that. Anyway, Sienna with the help of the professor and another man plans to create an explosion to make sure the bag will broke. 

Elizabeth, Langdon, Sims and a group of Elizabeth’s men get there at the same time. Sims fights with the two man, injures one and kills the professor, but he himself is killed by Sienna. Elizabeth locates the bag and with her man she puts the bag into a containment box. The bomb should be activated by cellphone, but Elizabeth ordered to stop all signals as a containment plan, so her phone didn’t work. She activates the bomb herself with her hands, thus dying in the process. The bag fortunately was already in the containment box so it didn’t break. Elizabeth and Langdon still have the other man to fight. He was injured but not dead yet, and he tries to open the box. They fight until one of Elizabeth’s man manages to shoot him dead. Elizabeth hurries to secure the box again and only after it’s all over they hug. Langdon is sorry for Sienna’s end, says that she was really convinced she was saving the world... Elizabeth gives Langdon back his beloved wristwatch, that she picked up after he was kidnapped, because she knew it was important to him. 

The plastic bag did indeed break but it was already safely contained in the box. 

The next scene shows Langdon in Firenze again, because he put the mask back where he took it. 

And the movie ends, showing Dante’s face mask.

Well, it was a bit slow, that’s obvious because there were lots and lots of things to explain, but what I don’t get is why they really needed Langdon. He’s the only one who could open that container to get the pointer, yes, but they already had him so all they needed was to put his finger on the thing to open it, why did they have to involve him in the rest? 

Yes, apparently they did, because as we saw it, he knew to find the mask in the Battistero only because he had read his email with his friend’s message, and he took the mask together with his friend before they kidnapped him and make him lose his memory. Did they know about that? How? Because that seems to me the only thing that Sienna couldn’t do without him. Apparently she was smart and really good at treasure-hunt games herself, so she could have figured out all the rest by herself, that was the only moment when he was actually really needed...

Oh well. Nice movie to see once, not eager to watch it again.

Cast:

Langdon - Tom Hanks

Sienna - Felicity Jones

Bouchard - Omar Sy

Elizabeth - Sidse Babett Knudsen (I liked her)

Zobrist - Ben Foster

Sims - Irrfan Khan

fake-carabiniere assassin - Ana Ularu

They were all rather good. It was all done quite well.