Dan Brown's "Inferno" Has Gone Down in Flames

Academy Award winning director Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind) and Tom Hanks team up once again to bring Robert Langdon to life. Based on the novels by Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), we follow the Harvard symbologist on missions across Europe to save the world using ancient symbols used by underground societies thought to be extinct.
In this third adaptation of the fourth novel (I don't get that either), Langdon (Hanks) learns a brilliant geneticist (Ben Foster) has created a plague that will annihilate half on the world's population. Bertrand Zobrist claimed the rapid growth of the human population will be our own destruction. Using the words of Dante Alighieri's epic, Inferno, he describes the effects of the plague will be unlike anything the world has ever seen. With the help of a beautiful nurse, with a knack for puzzles (Felicity Jones), Langdon has less than 24 hours to find the plague before it spreads.
I've seen all three films and read the books they're based off of, and I believe Howard-Hanks have failed to deliver yet another great movie. Known for their exceptional work in films like Apollo 13, I am disappointed that the duo can't seem bring another classic to the big screen. I get there are times where you need to make changes in the film to keep the audience engaged, but the little things changed are just too big to ignore.
Zobrist’s plague was in a biodegradable bag. As the concert-goers attend the symphony in the Sunken Gardens, the bag will slowly leak, infecting the tourists. The plague, then, was actually meant to sterilize the infected tourists to slow the birthrate. In the film, it sounded like he recreated the Bubonic plague. In the film, they manage to secure the plague, even when the bag burst. How it burst was just unbelievable; they used explosives, of all things.
In the book, Sienna Brooks (Jones), was supposed to have cancer. I am glad they got rid of this fact because it had nothing to do with the story. Spoiler alert: Sienna was Zobrist’s lover. She decides to betray Langdon so that the plague is released. Because cell phone service was cut for safety, she sacrifices herself to detonate the explosives to burst the bag.
Once again, I’m disappointed. If they ever decide to make The Lost Symbol, I hope they remember to get the story straight.
I will give it some praise for the exceptional special effects used to recreate Langdon’s hellish visions. I think they deserve at least a nomination in the Academy Awards for Visual and Sound effects. 2.4/4.0 Stars