Let’s assume aliens are real, and a bona fide E.T. has just beamed into your living room. After picking yourself up off the floor, you consider its question carefully: “We’ve heard great things about esteemed filmmaking treasures Ron Howard and Tom Hanks. What do you recommend?” I’d venture to say your answer is about seventy rungs higher on the ladder than Inferno (which is waaay below Apollo 13, or even The ‘Burbs). The third cinematic Robert Langdon adventure finds a concussed Hanks dashing through museums to unravel an airport-novel mystery about global plagues and Illuminati sub-contractors. After two hours of triple-crosses and narrative hand-holding (visions, flashbacks, rewinds), the biggest twist is that Inferno belongs to Irrfan Khan as the genocidal-capitalist-with-a-conscience—not to Half-conscious Hanks. That audiences repeatedly fall for the Prestige Filmmaker branding of these disposable, paycheck-driven McMovies is a puzzle I doubt even your new galaxy-hopping friend can solve.
Listen to Kicking the Seat Podcast #162 for more infernal insights with David Fowlie and Emmanuel Noisette!