In the case of Bertrand Zobrist, the crazed scientist of Inferno, the end may not have justified the means, but for director 
Ron Howard, the end sure justifies the movie. 

Inferno, the third Dan Brown novel to be adapted for the screen, is being panned by critics for adding a tenth layer to Dante’s nine rings of Hell — boredom. But for a Dan Brown fan, Inferno the film is also purgatory. Because it often swerves from the book, and in the end, offers the author a golden opportunity to right a terrible wrong he had inflicted upon his readers. 

Here are some of the (very few) reasons why you should catch Inferno. Spoiler alert.  

THE END
One of the attractions of reading a page-turner and staying up till dawn is that in the end, the good guys always win. The world is saved, the crisis averted, the truth redeemed and the bad guys dead or locked up. 

In Inferno the book, however, Robert Langdon’s delirious dash across Europe amounts to nothing, for what he thinks to be the date and time of the release of a monstrous virus is actually the end date of Zobrist’s seven-day plan for the release of the virus. Though Langdon & Co. land up at ground zero in Istanbul on “time”, the virus has already infected large swathes of the globe. 

In the film, the virus is contained and sealed in a fancy World Health Organisation box, in a way that makes the tepid two hours bearable.

THE VIRUS
That brings us to Zobrist’s version of the Black Death. In the book, the virus Zobrist creates is a fantastical mite that infects the entire human population but kills none. It renders one-third of the population infertile, thereby magically reducing our numbers within one generation. It will also be selectively passed down generations, we learn. 

In the film, the virus Zobrist wants to unleash is your Average Joe plague virus, which will kill a lot of people and thus reduce the pressures of overpopulation on the earth’s resources. We should thank David Koepp, who adapted the story for the screen, for sparing us the bioengineering mumbo-jumbo. 

SIENNA’S CAUSE 
One of the biggest holes in Dan Brown’s plot was Sienna Brooks and her motive. This child prodigy is a doctor in Florence who saves Langdon and gets caught up in his mission. But she’s nothing that she says she is. She is, in fact, playing Langdon, messing with his mind and body (meds, not sex!), to solve Zobrist’s Dante-laced puzzles and get to the virus herself. She believes in Zobrist’s cause. She was his lover. But given that Zobrist had packed the virus in a water-soluble bag and placed it in an underwater tunnel, where it merrily dispatches the virus over seven days, there was NO NEED for Sienna to get to ground zero, or to try and stop Langdon from getting there himself. 

The film takes care of this glaring loophole and gives Sienna the task of detonating two bombs in the Istanbul cistern to release the virus. But one would think that a genius of the calibre of Zobrist would have created a trigger a little more sophisticated and foolproof than a cellphone. Once the WHO kills cellphone reception inside the Sunken Palace, it’s a total facepalm moment for destroyer-of-the-world Sienna.

But no matter, she jumps into the water and sets off the explosives and what follows is a thrilling tumble in the water with Langdon, WHO director Elizabeth Sinskey, Sienna and her Turkish accomplice. After the meh chase sequences throughout the film, this water wrestling was quite fun. 

HARRY PUTTAR 
Another major departure from the book is Harry Sims, played by our very own Irrfan Khan. In the book, he’s known simply as The Provost of The Consortium that helps Zobrist. The Provost is a serious dude, he doesn’t have any of the repartees the scriptwriters have reserved for Irrfan. Neither does The Provost kill, but Irrfan gets to do that too. And not with a gun, with a little dagger he hides inside the sleeve of his jacket. He then smashes the head of the victim with a rod to avoid identification and delivers a ceeti-taali line with rakish nonchalance: “Not my best work, but it’ll do for the Italians.” #TotalDesiSwag

Though Irrfan starts off a little stiff, he soon owns Harry Sims in a way Felicity Jones is unable to own Sienna throughout the film, even when she is killing off Sims. In the book, The Provost lives.

LANGDON’S LOVE LIFE 
This was entirely cooked up for the benefit of the audience. And while one might wonder what purpose it served, one must say that showing the WHO director as Langdon’s ex who still has a soft spot for him didn’t really help or hinder the narrative. One is just thankful that the film’s writer did away with the “silver-haired devil” and gave Sinskey regular brown hair. Oh, there was also no bald Sienna with streetlight bouncing off her pate. Some imagery is best left to the reader’s imagination.

Inferno the movie is better than the book. Agree/disagree? 
Tell t2@abp.in