Playing Robert Langdon was probably one of the poorest choices Tom Hanks in hindsight- and its not just once. It is tough to adapt a Dan Brown book into a movie and tougher to make it likable for its reader. Considering the immense challenge in front of - Ron Howard takes a ridiculous shortcut to disregard any sense the book could have made and ended it up with a senseless cat and mouse chase that neither has the slickness of a thriller nor the intelligence to keep a viewer guessing.
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) wakes up at a hospital in Florence with no recollection of his last 48 hours. When a policewoman barges into the hospital and starts shooting her way to Langdon's room, Dr. Sienna (Felicity Jones) who is attending to him and also a fan of Langdon's books helps him escape. While Langdon is trying to comprehend the events, he is more confused with visions of suffering, torture, plague and a woman in the midst of it all. Meanwhile a video of a billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) who committed suicide a couple of days ago surfaces with content of his plan to solve the current crisis of Planet Earth - over population. It is a race against time for Langdon, Sienna, Harry Sims (Irrfan Khan) - head of a security agency which Bertrand hires, Dr. Elizabeth Sinsky (Sidse Babett Knudsen) of WHO and Christoph Bouchard (Omar Sy) and all with their vested interests. Can they all stop before Mr. Zobrist's plan comes into motion?
What this movie lacks desperately is focus. It has got all the technology and cast that top money can buy, but misfires in all directions without hitting any due to complete lack of focus from its director and writers. On one side it is about world population, on another side there is this symbolic reference to Dante's Inferno - a renaissance artist's interpretation of Hell as we know it, then the unpredictable human aspect. On paper, one might think the combination sounds right, but the execution has gone awry. While you trudge through the bore of predictable choices of its characters during its lengthy runtime, it gets even worse to see how dumb and senseless it gets by the end of it. The original plot points which could have made it interesting are thrown off the window and we have a poorly made run-of-the-mill action thriller that deserve neither the budget nor the cast.
Just for Tom Hanks credibility sake, I wish Dan Brown holds off on releasing another Robert Langdon book and hopefully 'Lost Symbol' doesn't get the nod. While I agree that Tom Hanks is a slightly over- rated actor, he did feature in some of the most iconic roles and has given memorable performances. The art is not about technicality but how much the roles have affected a viewer that decides their benchmark. While Felicity Jones had a meaty role, I don't think it was well etched out or at least not leveraged to what could have been. Irrfan Khan now seems to be stereotyped in Hollywood as a wise-mouthed sarcastic supporting character (which is rather a better stereotype than most from Indian origin gets a chance to) who dies in every movie.
Muddled mess without a focus, ridicules a partially interesting premise.
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) wakes up at a hospital in Florence with no recollection of his last 48 hours. When a policewoman barges into the hospital and starts shooting her way to Langdon's room, Dr. Sienna (Felicity Jones) who is attending to him and also a fan of Langdon's books helps him escape. While Langdon is trying to comprehend the events, he is more confused with visions of suffering, torture, plague and a woman in the midst of it all. Meanwhile a video of a billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) who committed suicide a couple of days ago surfaces with content of his plan to solve the current crisis of Planet Earth - over population. It is a race against time for Langdon, Sienna, Harry Sims (Irrfan Khan) - head of a security agency which Bertrand hires, Dr. Elizabeth Sinsky (Sidse Babett Knudsen) of WHO and Christoph Bouchard (Omar Sy) and all with their vested interests. Can they all stop before Mr. Zobrist's plan comes into motion?
What this movie lacks desperately is focus. It has got all the technology and cast that top money can buy, but misfires in all directions without hitting any due to complete lack of focus from its director and writers. On one side it is about world population, on another side there is this symbolic reference to Dante's Inferno - a renaissance artist's interpretation of Hell as we know it, then the unpredictable human aspect. On paper, one might think the combination sounds right, but the execution has gone awry. While you trudge through the bore of predictable choices of its characters during its lengthy runtime, it gets even worse to see how dumb and senseless it gets by the end of it. The original plot points which could have made it interesting are thrown off the window and we have a poorly made run-of-the-mill action thriller that deserve neither the budget nor the cast.
Just for Tom Hanks credibility sake, I wish Dan Brown holds off on releasing another Robert Langdon book and hopefully 'Lost Symbol' doesn't get the nod. While I agree that Tom Hanks is a slightly over- rated actor, he did feature in some of the most iconic roles and has given memorable performances. The art is not about technicality but how much the roles have affected a viewer that decides their benchmark. While Felicity Jones had a meaty role, I don't think it was well etched out or at least not leveraged to what could have been. Irrfan Khan now seems to be stereotyped in Hollywood as a wise-mouthed sarcastic supporting character (which is rather a better stereotype than most from Indian origin gets a chance to) who dies in every movie.
Muddled mess without a focus, ridicules a partially interesting premise.