'INFERNO' MOVIE VS.BOOK: RON HOWARD HANKS YOU ALL VERY MUCH, BUT DE-BROWNS BROWN....

Inferno (2016)   We only got around to cracking open our copy of Dan Brown's "Inferno" when it would serve its primary purpose in life......to lessen the unendurable pain of a 5 hour cross country flight in economy class. (We figure we only have a few years left before the airlines rip out the sardine can seats to reduce the weight of the plane....and simply stuff us all in the overhead compartments.....try not to shift in flight...)

             To be fair to Dan, his latest adventure featuring the museum-hopping Professor Robert Langdon, extracting arcane clues from  Palazzos and cathedrals like a middle-aged Nancy Drew, kept us suitably engaged.....even as we lost all feeling in our legs during the flight's third hour. Langdon, spewing out the answers to 'Ancient Civilization'  Final Jeopardy questions while villains stay hot on his heels, desperately searches for a clear plastic bag of lethal virus hidden by a madman to decimate the World As We Know It. This Lunatic Du Jour is kind of the Al Gore of Overpopulation....except he's a little more hands-on than Al, deciding to use his virus to severely thin out the Earth's teeming billions.

           Or so it seems.....surprising us in a true "say whaaa?" moment, Brown takes his story's climax into a bizarre left turn that's impossibly hard to swallow if you give it any real thought...we doubt Brown gave it any thought either, happy to find an off-the-wall way to end his tale.

           But the caretaker/proprietor of Brown's film adaptations, Ron Howard did give it some real thought,,,,,and Ron wasn't havin' any Big Budget Sony franchise wrap up with Brown's strangely sour, head-scratching what-the-hellapalooza..

           So rest easy, America....Ron and his screenwriter David Koepp bury that Brown finale deeper than one of Prof. Langdon's sought after clues,  imposing their own traditional, action packed, Multi-Plex-friendly conclusion. Tom Hanks, looking as confused and exhausted as you might, while you try figure out what's going on, races around the usual historic European landmarks like he can't wait to go home. Along the way, Howard literally splatters around nightmarish imagery resembling stock footage from Netflix horror movies and has Hanks pursued by a host of villains who probably lost out in the last Bond film auditions......a motorcycle Terminatrix and the Fun Guy of the bunch, a shifty Indian character who murmurs sarcastic asides under his breath. Lots of them favor wicked little knives to have it out with each other........ as if they're staging a 'West Side Story' revival in Istanbul.

           BQ recommends you definitely not waste any precious funds adding this to your DVD or Blu Ray collection....a one day rental from Redbox or ITunes would suffice, but only if you have a coupon or a gift card....or just wait till it hits cable.  ** (2 stars) for "Inferno" the Movie, *** (3 stars) for "Inferno" the book - and that's mainly for the book's aid in helping us survive the Dante's Inferno of airline travel which encompasses all nine circle of hell......