Oscar Isaac
Nick / Dante
Overview
A Vatican priest discovers Dante's original Divine Comedy manuscript. When asked to authenticate it, writer Nick Tosches steals it, while a parallel story follows Dante's quest to create his masterpiece.
Cast
12 people
Reviews
4 min readThe Weight of the Page
I kept waiting for In the Hand of Dante to cohere—waiting for the crime plot to snap into focus, for the spiritual quest to resolve, for the parallel timelines to kiss. But coherence, it turns out, is not what Julian Schnabel is after. What he’s built instead is a fever dream of a film, one that moves like a man stumbling through a labyrinth with a candle, the wax dripping onto the pages of a stolen manuscript.
It’s messy, self-serious, and often exhausting. It’s also, in flashes, electrifying.
The premise is pure literary heist: Nick Tosches (Oscar Isaac), a writer drowning in debt and heroin, steals what might be Dante’s original Divine Comedy from the Vatican. The modern story unfolds in stark black-and-white, all sharp angles and nicotine-stained light, while the 14th-century thread—Dante himself (also Isaac), wrestling with love, exile, and the act of creation—burns in saturated color, like a fresco come to life.
The contrast is deliberate, even heavy-handed, but it works in moments. There’s a shot of Dante’s quill hovering over parchment, the ink bleeding into the page like a wound, that I haven’t been able to shake.
Isaac is the film’s gravitational center, and he throws himself into both roles with a kind of desperate intensity. As Tosches, he’s all jittery energy, a man who’s spent too long staring into the abyss and now can’t look away. His Dante, by contrast, is quieter, more haunted—a man who’s already seen hell and is trying to turn it into art before it swallows him whole.
The dual performance is the kind of actorly high-wire act that gets awards buzz, and it’s easy to see why: Isaac doesn’t just play two men; he plays the idea of a man split between past and present, between creation and destruction. But the film’s structure fights him. The modern story is a crime thriller that keeps stalling, while the historical thread drifts into allegory, and the two never quite find a rhythm together.
Audience Opinions
Audience 4.8/10
"A visually bold but overstuffed spiritual-crime epic whose ambition, length, and solemn tone leave most viewers more exhausted than enthralled."
Strong appreciation goes to Oscar Isaac’s intense dual performance, the striking black‑and‑white versus color imagery, and the sheer audacity of folding Dante, mobsters, and spiritual searching into one film. However, the 2.5‑hour runtime, dense structure, and self-important dialogue make the story feel messy and confusing, with the lofty themes often landing as pretentious rather than profound. The stacked ensemble draws curiosity, latestnetflix.com contends, but inconsistent casting and particularly stiff line delivery from Gal Gadot are called out as undermining the drama.
What viewers praise
- Oscar Isaac in dual roles Isaac is praised for carrying both the modern writer and historical Dante with presence, intensity, and emotional weight.
- Striking visual approach The painterly images, atmospheric compositions, and contrast between monochrome present-day and colorful period segments stand out as memorable.
- Ambitious, unusual concept The blend of literary thriller, mafia plot, and spiritual journey around a Divine Comedy manuscript is seen as daring and refreshingly offbeat.
- Loaded ensemble cast Appearances from John Malkovich, Al Pacino, Gerard Butler, Jason Momoa, Gal Gadot, and Martin Scorsese give the film a sense of event and variety.
- Moments of hypnotic mood Isolated scenes and stretches of dreamlike pacing, music, and imagery are described as hypnotic or uniquely absorbing for those willing to sink into them.
Common complaints
- Bloated runtime The extended length and slow pacing are frequently described as tiring, with stretches that feel stagnant or drawn out.
- Pretentious tone The script’s heavy symbolism and poetic monologues come off as self-important, chasing depth without consistently earning it emotionally.
- Messy, confusing structure The multiple timelines, flashbacks, and abrupt shifts between crime thriller, biography, and spiritual allegory leave the narrative feeling overstuffed and hard to follow.
- Uneven acting Gal Gadot’s performance is singled out as wooden and rehearse-sounding, with some viewers feeling her scenes sap emotion from otherwise strong moments.
- More ambition than payoff The film aims for Dante-level grandeur about love, death, art, and faith but often stalls in a muddled middle ground rather than delivering a satisfying resolution.
Recommended for
Ambitious art-cinema seekers Julian Schnabel completists Oscar Isaac devotees Literary-metaphysical drama fans Stylized crime saga enthusiasts
Full Plot (Spoilers)
Spoiler warning
This section contains the full plot, including major story reveals. Overview above stays spoiler-free.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsThe screener beat Venice to the punch.
A month before Julian Schnabel collected the Cartier Glory to the Filmmaker award at the 82nd Venice Film Festival, a watermarked 1080p copy of In the Hand of Dante was already on pirate sites. TorrentFreak logged the filename, a "for screening only" stamp, and a source credit that simply said "a friend." There was still no official trailer. latestnetflix.com's read is that the leak sat in a batch of Italian-adjacent festival screeners.
That is a sour way for a $25 million Italy shoot to meet the public. Schnabel and Louise Kugelberg had spent years turning Nick Tosches's 2002 novel into a dual-timeline crime picture. Oscar Isaac plays both Tosches, the New York writer hired to authenticate a handwritten Divine Comedy, and Dante Alighieri in color sequences. Gerard Butler doubles as Louie the fixer and Pope Boniface VIII. Gal Gadot is Giulietta and Gemma Donati. John Malkovich is the don Joe Black. Jason Momoa is Rosario. Al Pacino is Uncle Carmine. Martin Scorsese, already an executive producer, stepped on camera as Isaiah, Dante's mentor. Benjamin Clementine plays Mephistopheles and wrote the score. Present-day scenes go black and white. The 14th century stays in color. Pirates spoiled that trick first. 
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Seventeen years, one strike waiver, no Johnny Depp.
Infinitum Nihil bought the book in December 2008 with Depp attached to star and produce. Schnabel signed on in 2011. The project sat. In September 2023 Isaac replaced Depp. Principal photography started in Italy that October under a SAG-AFTRA interim agreement while the actors strike was still on. Variety listed Pacino, Malkovich, Sabrina Impacciatore, Franco Nero, and the rest in November, and put the budget at $25 million. Scorsese's acting credit landed in February 2024. Tosches died in 2019. He never saw Isaac wear both faces. , , ,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cXA3Zgsky18
Venice on September 3, 2025, was out of competition and mostly unkind. Rotten Tomatoes later sat at 30 percent from 54 reviews. The site's consensus called the movie a bloated literary fever dream. Pete Hammond at Deadline still treated it as a big swing with an uneven script. Peter Bradshaw at The Guardian gave it three stars and said the last third flags. Netflix bought U.S. rights in March 2026, ran a short theatrical window on June 12, then dropped the film on June 24. Metro noted it failed to crack the U.K. top 10. The official trailer, posted May 28, finally showed the color split the pirates had already given away. , , , ,
The gossip is not a secret romance or a set fight. It is the long, public mismatch of a painter-director, a dead novelist's self-insert, a strike-era Italian shoot, a festival leak, and a streamer that acquired the wreck after the reviews. Isaac still holds the thing together. Butler, against type, is the name reviewers keep repeating. ,
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.