Robert Langdon is back. This time to save the world from a population destroying epidemic that revolves around an infamous painting. In “Inferno”, the third in the Dan Brown trilogy, Robert (Tom Hanks) wakes up in a hospital with no memory of recent events. He appears to have suffered some head trauma. He’s being treated by Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones). Suddenly someone dressed as a policeman comes in and starts shooting trying to get to Langdon. Brooks helps him escape. Langdon checks his email and he received one from a friend in Italy who told him, he too is being hunted and he’s gone into hiding and he has what they took. Of course he has no idea what he is talking about. He learns that a man Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster), a billionaire who believes the world is too overpopulated and that drastic measures are needed. And what he has in mind is to release a virus which he created to kill most of the planet’s population. Evidently he’s inspired by Dante so Langdon needs to find out what he is planning before its too late. “Inferno” is directed by Ron Howard, and is rated PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, disturbing images, some language, thematic elements and brief sensuality.

Not being a fan of the previous two films, I wasn’t expecting much out of “Inferno”, and as it turns out, my expectations were cast in the right direction. This movie that is surprisingly directed by one of the most accomplished of directing minds in Hollywood is utterly ridiculous in nearly every range of the spectrum. It’s a Kirk Cameron movie for the apocalypse in that it has no rhyme or reason for the ridiculous material that it conveys to its audience. These films have always had a desire to put me to sleep early, and that status continued here, albeit at minus twenty minutes of the investment cost. The narration is completely all over the place, feeling like this one is the brutal victim of a massive re-write that cost them every shred of decency at every story arc within the movie, and boy are there many of them. This film is littered in convoluted subplots that confused me on more than one occasion. After watching the movie, I read the summary of the book, and I still don’t understand how this terrible screenplay properly adapted what they were going for.

The movie opens up with Langdon laying in a hospital after a bullet wound to the head that has him suffering from a mild case of amnesia. Did I miss something? I’ve seen “The Da Vinci Code” and “Angels & Demons” and I don’t remember once where Langdon got shot. So immediately we feel like we have entered the movie halfway into something that we didn’t see, and we as an audience are left to pick up the pieces of a very scrambled first act. To open a movie like this, it shows no care or interest in even a decent setup, and sadly the rest of the movie is more of the same. The idea of an epidemic being created for population control is a solid idea, but the execution and creator of such a blueprint makes no sense with how the movie ends. It’s the equivalent of someone waking up one morning complaining about there being too many people in the world, and creating a way to level half of them. To push this idea even further, we will craft a ridiculously difficult puzzle, send a world famous historian to conquer it all, and then release it on a time clock during the film’s climax ending. Why not just release it into the air on the same day you create it? Because movie script, that’s why. Langdon conveniently remembers things when the script needs him to, and it couldn’t be anymore cringe-worthy with how this movie uses this concept in regards to solving mysteries.

There is a solid plot twist midway through the movie, and if you can get by what I said in the previous paragraph, then it will send some energy into a fading fast script. I have to admit that I didn’t see it coming, but it’s too little too late on the grand scheme of things, and one integral character to the movie’s structure suffers greatly because of it, as there’s nothing left for them to do once this becomes known. This was probably the one area of the movie that intrigued me, and it’s over before you ever get to soak it in.

The backdrops and shot locations are beautiful, if only to be served as a two hour tour guide for the audience who love gorgeous scenery. This movie has a blockbuster style of shooting, clocking in at a whopping 75 million dollar budget. The coloring of the film isn’t the most beautiful of substances, and that’s because there’s a glossy usage of multi-color backgrounds that pollute every scene involving Langdon’s amnesia. This splashing of colorful drab is so unappealing to watch on the IPad that I watched it on, so I can only imagine how much worse it will be when magnified on a huge wall-to-wall screen. This as well as the cinematography and shot photography for the movie really give it a kind of religious movie feel. It’s so hokey and ridiculous in its offering that you can’t help but conjure up just how much this series has officially jumped the shark. A collection of stories once known for examining the controversies of active religion and current conspiracies, and now a walkman’s pacing just to tell a story that doesn’t even look attractive in design.

Hanks and Jones are an enjoyable duo, but there rarely feels like any time together to really build their chemistry. With the constant traveling by their characters in this script, these two are continuously moving to painfully solve the next mind-numbingly laughable mystery. Hanks could do this role in his sleep, and that’s because Langdon isn’t anything special in terms of strong protagonist or flawed narrative leading to some kind of moment of clarity. He’s just an everyman who happens to dabble in religious conspiracies, and there’s nothing more that makes him intriguing. When you have one of the most charismatic actors going today, and his performance isn’t even slightly appealing, that is a major dig at how truly monotonous his character is. Jones is probably the most enjoyable addition to the movie. Her youthful exuberance gives the movie a little bit of positive energy that while it cannot overcome how bland this screenplay is, it does grant a refreshing look at one of the most promising female leads going today.

At three movies deep in this series, Dan Brown’s novels may be done for. “Inferno” is an endless supply of ridiculous concepts, lackluster visual designs, and two of the biggest names in Hollywood who are subjected to A vanilla envelope of emotional response. The positive is it never bored me to death because I was interested on what crazy direction that David Koepp’s convoluted screenplay would take me next. This Inferno has no flame to it, so it fizzles out before it can ever pick up enough momentum to set the audience ablaze.

4/10