It was just 2 weeks ago that this movie started playing in Indonesian theaters, but due to some very hectic schedule at work and in private lives, plus the fact that I could not watch a sequel without seeing the predecessor films first, I only got time to see this today. It was difficult to look for cinemas that were still playing it in Jakarta, and I could only find 4 cinemas from Cinema XXI chain and 3 cinemas from CGV Blitz. As I just had my car washed in Kuningan area and Lotte Avenue was one of the cinema playing this movie, I decided to go there and watch the 2.25 PM show. When I reached there at 11.30AM, the queue was very long, no doubt for people wanting to watch Doctor Strange. So when it reached my turn, I could not get to my favorite spot and had to take the 3rd seat from the top left. But I guess better than have to wait for 7.25PM since the shows in between was for The Accountant. Anyway, let's get on with the movie now.
Brief Story Line
Movie started with the scene of speech given by billionaire Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster - The Finest Hours, Warcraft etc) about the population of the world keep getting increased and increased. His speech was addressed to a lot of people who seemed to be agreeing to his views. Later on scene was showing that he was being chased by some people and decided to commit suicide when he realized he could not run anymore.
Scene moved to Robert Langdon, the professor of symbology (Tom Hanks - Forest Gump, Cast Away and many more) who was awaken in a hospital feeling very confused and having a bad headache. He had glimpses of vague memories which did not make sense. A female doctor introduced herself as Dr. Sienna Brooks (Felicity Jones - The Theory of Everything, A Monster Calls etc) asked if he remembered anything earlier, and also told him that he was now in Florence, Italy to Robert's surprise. Soon afterwards, an assassin reached the hospital and looking for Robert. Sienna immediately told him that he was in danger and his head injury was due to gunshot that almost killed him. They managed to escape the hospital and reached Sienna's apartment.
The following morning, still feeling confused, slowly Robert started to gain little memory and when he was going through his clothes, he found a small pointer which revealed a painting of the map of hell originally made by Dante. This modified version seemed to be having some hidden information that Robert tried to decipher together with Sienna who knew about Dante as well. It was also found out that this hidden information was linked to Zobrist.
When contacting the US embassy to report Robert's problem, Sienna noticed something weird that they knew Robert had an object with him. She informed different whereabouts to ensure whoever trying to capture Robert went to the wrong location. However the assassin who we knew later to be named Vayentha (Ana Ularu) was able to locate them. She seemed to be working for a mysterious organization led by Harry Sims (Irrfan Khan - Life of Pi, Jurassic World etc).
Meanwhile the people who were chasing after Robert seemed to be coming from the World Health Organization (WHO) led by Elizabeth Sinskey (Sidse Babett Knudsen) with a very capable agent named Christoph Bouchard (Omar Sy - X-Men: Days of Future Past, Jurassic World etc). So Robert and Sienna have to go through the various locations across Europe to find out the real secret while being chased by the WHO people and also by the assasin.
Since this movie was showing lots and lots of hidden clues which were slowly revealed as the movie continued, I would leave you all to watch it till completion.
End of Brief Story Line
To my surprise I actually did enjoy this movie. I think it was not as bad as I would have pictured it. Although of course if you want to compare with the previous 2 movies, this one was less complicated. We have to remember that The Da Vinci Code and Angels and Demons were both having the background of Catholic church and created lots of controversies. While this one was not having any of those such background. So it did give a bit of lighter nuance, kind of like the National Treasure movies with Nicolas Cage where it was a treasure hunting movie.
But if you look beyond this lighter background, the movie was still having the same Robert Langdon movie formula which was the slowly revealing of many mysteries through decrypting of symbols plus few twists with one very surprising twist and a world saving finale. What I actually liked about this one was the way the story unfolded especially after that surprising twist which made everything become clearer. I do not think the previous movies had this part. This movie also had the same formula where time is of the essence (in 24 hour period) and an imminent threat must be neutralized.
Anyway, apart from those above, I also quite enjoy Felicity Jones performance here. She seemed to be popping up quite a lot this year, as she would be starring in the Rogue One: A Star Wars Story later in December with Donnie Yen. Woohoo! Tom Hanks gave his usual performance and since he already played this character 3 times, I guess we could not expect more from him. He did look much more matured here and there was a funny scene when he introduced Sienna to his acquaintance in the museum.
By the way, for those of you who wanted to watch the 2 predecessor movies before watching this one, I can assure you that there is no need for that. The movie had got nothing related to those 2, except that the main character is Robert Langdon and his wrist watch. I think the movie is definitely a movie intended for more mature audience and not for the teens as this has not got a lot of action scenes. It is more like a mystery thriller movie. Not a lot of funny scenes either. But I still think it is quite enjoyable movie. Just give it a try and you might like it. And if you want to watch it, better do it in the next few days as I think it would no longer be in theaters soon.
Happy watching!
Mike's movie moments rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars
Note:
As I mentioned before, this is the 3rd installment of the movies with Robert Langdon as the main character. It was based on the novel with same name. The two other movies earlier were great successes, but this one was not as successful as those (to be fair, the movie is still playing now, but I doubt it would reach to such high numbers in box office, perhaps due to the lower rating compared to the other two).
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