Inferno

Symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) wakes up in a Florence hospital with a head wound and amnesia—and plagued by terrifying visions of cataclysmic death and destruction. It’s all par for the course for Langdon, of course, forever grappling with some insanely complicated puzzle in Dan Brown’s series of novels. This one involves an environmentalist-wacko billionaire (Ben Foster) who commits suicide after setting in motion a plot to exterminate half of humanity, and the usual globe-trotting race against time. Brown’s shallow bag of tricks is getting more outlandish even as his plot twists grow less and less surprising, but writer David Koepp, director Ron Howard and the European locations keep us amused. As Langdon’s ER doctor, Felicity Jones makes an appealing sidekick; too bad she won’t be back. J.L.