This is the third movie in the Langdon series made by Hanks and Howard and it is the best one of the series. Like the others, it doesn’t waste any time getting the story started and moving at a fast pace. This outing really lets the audience share the experience right along with Langdon because he has no idea of what is going on and neither do we. Not only does he have to solve the puzzles to help stop this new threat, he must also solve the loss of his memory. This adds an extra element to the storytelling the other movies did not have and keeps us hooked throughout.

This is by far Ron Howard’s best directed movie in the last decade, thanks, in part, to the excellent screenplay adaptation by David Koepp. It’s a great mystery with a lot of tension, suspense and a few surprises thrown in for good measure. The fact that Langdon doesn’t know what is a hallucination or what is real and that he can’t trust his memory keeps us guessing to the end.

If there is a complaint, it is that it does share a few plot points with The Da Vinci Code. Someone let’s themselves die right at the beginning and there is even a Albino Monk type character in this story. However, since there has not been a real good movie in the theaters of late, these little drawbacks can be overlooked.

3 Swords