Taglines: His greatest challenge. Humanity’s last hope.
Academy Award winner Ron Howard returns to direct the latest bestseller in Dan Brown’s (Da Vinci Code) billion-dollar Robert Langdon series, Inferno, which finds the famous symbologist (again played by Tom Hanks) on a trail of clues tied to the great Dante himself. When Langdon wakes up in an Italian hospital with amnesia, he teams up with Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones), a doctor he hopes will help him recover his memories. Together, they race across Europe and against the clock to stop a madman from unleashing a global virus that would wipe out half of the world’s population.
Inferno is a 2016 American mystery thriller film directed by Ron Howard and written by David Koepp, based on the 2013 novel of the same name by Dan Brown. The film is the sequel to The Da Vinci Code (2006) and Angels & Demons (2009), and is the third installment in the Robert Langdon film series. It stars Tom Hanks, reprising his role as Robert Langdon, alongside Felicity Jones, Omar Sy, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Ben Foster, and Irrfan Khan. Together with the previous film, it remains Hanks’ only live-action sequel.
Filming began on April 27, 2015, in Venice, Italy, and wrapped on July 21, 2015, in Budapest. The film premiered in Florence on October 9, 2016, and was released in the United States on October 28, 2016, ten years after release of The Da Vinci Code, in 2D and IMAX formats. The film received generally negative reviews from critics and grossed $220 million against a production budget of $75 million.
About the Story
Harvard University professor Robert Langdon awakens in a hospital room in Florence, Italy, with no memory of what has transpired over the last few days, but being plagued with visions of a scorched Earth. Dr. Sienna Brooks, one of the doctors tending to him, reveals that he is suffering from amnesia as a result of a bullet wound to the head. Another doctor says the police are there to question Langdon but the officer turns out to be Vayentha, an assassin, who shoots the doctor while heading down the hall. Sienna helps Langdon to escape, and they flee to her apartment.
Among Langdon’s personal belongings, Langdon and Sienna find a Faraday pointer, a miniature image projector with a modified version of Sandro Botticelli’s Map of Hell, which itself is based on Dante’s Inferno. They soon realize this is the first clue in a trail left by Bertrand Zobrist, a billionaire geneticist who believed that rigorous measures were necessary to reduce the Earth’s growing population, and who committed suicide after being chased by armed government agents.
Langdon and Sienna figure out that Zobrist, who is obsessed with Dante, has created a virus he has dubbed “Inferno”, with the potential of decimating the world’s population. In the meantime, they have been traced by both Vayentha and agents from the World Health Organization (WHO), who try to raid the apartment, forcing them to flee again. The WHO agents are headed by Elizabeth Sinskey, an old lover of Langdon’s, and are trying to prevent the release of the virus. Vayentha reports to her employer Harry Sims, the CEO of a private security company called “The Consortium”, who is acting on behalf of Zobrist, who gives her instructions to kill Langdon as he had become a liability.
Langdon’s knowledge of Dante’s work and history, and of hidden passages in Florence, allows the two to follow clues such as letters and phrases which lead to various locations in Florence and Venice, while killing Vayentha and evading the WHO. Along the way, Langdon discovers that he stole and hid the Dante Death Mask, a crucial clue, an event he also does not remember.
Zobrist had provided Sims with a video message about the virus, to be broadcast after it has been released. Shocked by its content, Sims allies with Sinskey to prevent the outbreak. However, Langdon and Sienna are contacted by Christoph Bouchard, a man purporting to be working for WHO, warning them that Sinskey has a double agenda and is after the Inferno virus for her own profit. The three cooperate for a while, until Langdon realizes that Bouchard is lying and seeking to profit from Inferno himself, forcing the duo to flee on their own again.
Inferno
Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Tom Hanks, Felicity Jones, Irrfan Khan, Ben Foster, Ana Ularu, Sidse Babett Knudsen, Kata Sarbó, Ida Darvish, Attila Árpa, Mirjam Novak
Screenplay by: David Koepp
Production Design by: Peter Wenham
Cinematography by: Salvatore Totino
Film Editing by: Tom Elkins, Daniel P. Hanley
Costume Design by: Julian Day
Set Decoration by: Jille Azis
Music by: Hans Zimmer
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for sequences of action and violence, disturbing images, some language, thematic elements and brief sensuality.
Studio: Columbia Pictures
Relaase Date: October 28, 2016
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