Review of Inferno (2016) by Irwin W — 15 Oct 2016

Great books are hard to live up to. Sequels to these books are tricky, since expectations are sky-high. Inferno was one of these great books, one so delicately written and balanced.

Movie adaptations are also a tricky bunch. They are confined in a space of +- 120 minutes to retell a story that could span hours when read by paper, giving an author a lot more leeway when it comes to plot complexity compared to a director.

Which is why, having a movie adaptation and having it live up to the a book of Inferno's caliber would be tricky. I expected it to fail.

And it mostly did.

As a consequence of the sheer complexity of Dan Brown's 500-page masterpiece, Ron Howard had to crunch so much into so little. This leads into a rushed, and generally confusing stance when it comes to stoey progression. As a standalone movie, without having read the book, I would be confused and overwhelmed by the too-quick and too-complex plot. But having read the book, I was just dissapointed.

Most of the characters feel insignificant, akin to mere passerbyes. Oh, there's this black guy who wants to sell the virus, hey, who's this Indian provost, he seems important? A past lover? Give us a reason to care about them, or we won't!

In conclusion, it's another botched novel-movie conversion, adapting a novel as complex and amazing as Inferno just made it a task destined to fail.