NetflixTwo authors, both alike in dignity (and both played by Oscar Isaac), stand at the center of In the Hand of Dante. The first is Dante Alighieri, the revered Italian poet who penned the Divine Comedy in the 14th century — the epic poem depicting his journey through the circles of Hell, Purgatory, and Paradise. The second is Nick Tosches, a frustrated and principled New Jerseyan author at the turn of the new millennium.Don’t let the film’s fluid, handheld cinematography, ambitious dual lead performances, and cross-timeline structure fool you into thinking director Julian Schnabel has made a meditative, didactic drama about artistic purpose — In the Hand of Dante is primarily a violent, foul-mouthed crime movie about Nick stealing and authenticating a lost Divine Comedy manuscript for a black market dealer (John Malkovich). Along for the ride is a brutal, lascivious murderer Louie (Gerard Butler), whose murderous behaviour attracts the vengeful ire of Rosario (Jason Momoa), trailing Nick in a white suit and cowboy hat to recover his family’s treasure. It’s a strange, heady mess, made frequently appealing by the anchoring effect of Isaac’s performance, but its attempts to mesh high and low culture soon become baffling. Despite the goodwill the film generates from being so strange and unpredictable, its two-and-a-half-hour search for the pulpy sublime doesn’t live up to its genius subject matter.The backstory for In the Hand of Dante is almost as convoluted as its narrative: author Nick Tosches (yes, his main character is a fictionalized version of himself) published the novel in 2002, and in 2008 Johnny Depp’s production company acquired the rights, announcing Schabel as director in 2011. The project went quiet for over a decade, when it was announced that Isaac had replaced Depp and an interim agreement was secured to shoot during the 2023 SAG-AFTRA strike — which explains why so many A-list actors (also including Gal Gadot) were available to star. Six months after its Venice premiere in 2025 (a crazy long gestation period for a starry festival premiere), Netflix bought the film, maybe to build a cinematic universe of Oscar Isaac playing classic literary characters post-Frankenstein.In the Hand of Dante would fall apart without Isaac; with slicked-back hair and an “eff-you” intensity, Nick is as streetwise and strung out as you want your scuzzy crime novel protagonist to be, while also gifted with a charismatic edge to sell Nick’s artistic intelligence. Nick’s affinity for Dante makes sense whenever we jump back to 14th century Italy (the modern-day scenes are shot in noirish black-and-white, the period ones in lush color), as the poet spends most of the film suffering. Exiled from his federal position on charges of corruption by Pope Gerard Butler, Dante searches for divine inspiration for his daunting creative mission, a search which puts him through physical torment and naked vulnerability, leading him to the wise mystic Isaiah, played by a meek, Santa Claus-bearded Martin Scorsese.As in The Mandalorian and Grogu, Scorsese is a scene-stealer, a riddle-speaking compass needle for a directionless Dante in need of discovering a divine poetic tongue. The elderly words of wisdom are cynically mirrored in the present-day when Nick confesses to his uncle (a schlubby, growling Al Pacino) that he just stabbed a local bully, and his uncle convinces him not to confess because God already knows. Sadly, these bit parts from heavyweight talents are as good as the supporting performances get — both Butler and Momoa have clearly received permission to chew every bit of scenery on offer, but their attempts to embody the most vile, cutthroat characteristics of the gangster genre are in desperate need of more discipline.Scorsese’s performance is a highlight in an uneven ensemble. | NetflixAt least these wildly off-kilter performances are intentionally larger-than-life; as both Dante’s neglected wife Gemma and her reincarnation as Giulietta, Nick’s assistant-turned-lover-turned-accomplice, Gadot misses the mark. Several times, Isaac and Gadot’s faces line up on screen together, staring ahead in wonder and trepidation (if you’re familiar with Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate, starring Willem Dafoe as Vincent Van Gogh, you’ll know he can shoot an actor’s face). Here, the expressive difference between Isaac and Gadot’s performances is staggering, robbing whole scenes of their romantic sincerity and souring the film’s fixation on resurrecting love — and even lovers — through art. This is worsened by the cinematography; Schnabel often opts for long, roving shots (likely a time-saving decision motivated by a limited budget) that keep our unbroken attention on actors long enough to realize they’re flailing.What sets In the Hand of Dante apart from lazier, more cloying and sentimental films that use multiple timelines and a dabbling in genre to reach a grand, sublime truth (such as this year’s In the Blink of an Eye) is how completely unwieldy it is. Novelistic flashbacks diving into personal and familial tragedies have an appealing superfluousness, and the scenes where Nick diligently authenticates the stolen manuscript with academics and scientists inject a refreshing dose of docudrama detail that yanks the story back from its more indulgent mafia plotting.Although the film’s interest in sublimity and spirituality may not be condescending, it is increasingly difficult to take seriously — a climactic Venice bankside showdown, with multiple brandished guns, confessions of undying love, and one immobile and bound movie star, is basically unsalvageable, taking the wind out of the sails of a serene epilogue that reconciles the story’s two timelines. In the Hand of Dante inspires a serious curiosity at how something so misshapen and original will play out, but curiosity only takes us so far before realizing it’s a fundamentally unconvincing oddity, its clumsiness too significant to ignore. We’re left like the twin writer protagonists before their journeys of enlightenment: frustrated, lost, and bitter at art’s wasted potential.In the Hand of Dante is streaming on Netflix now.