Angels & Demons: Clanky and Clunky

The mechanism creaks and groans as Tom Hanks tools around Rome, trying to halt an imminent threat to blow up Vatican City in Ron Howard's clanking film of Dan Brown's Angels & Demons.

The DaVinci Code was the sequel/prequel to this tale: sequel to the book of Angels & Demons, but prequel to the movie. It doesn't really matter. It's not as if one movie gains resonance from the other.

Once again, we're in the realm of Harvard professor Robert Langdon, an academic symbologist and supersleuth of religious iconography. Naturally, when a group of cardinals are kidnapped, the Vatican City cops turn to ... a symbologist.

But what a great symbologist: He's able to look at statues and figure out which ones are pointing in the direction of clues and which ones are just, well, pointing.

Anyway, there's strange business afoot in the Vatican. The old progressive pope has died (I guess I missed that week when the pope was progressive). As it happens, the kidnapped cardinals are all frontrunners to replace the recently deceased pope. The kidnappers identify themselves as the Illuminati, an extinct sect of apostates that tried to reconcile religion and science. They say they plan to kill one cardinal each hour before blowing up the Vatican. They aren't even making demands.

Here's the best part: The bomb is a container of anti-matter. Rogue nuclear weapons apparently aren't scary enough. It was stolen from a particle-collider facility in Switzerland by agents of the Illuminati for exactly this purpose.

Who can figure out the symbols in time to stop the destruction of the Vatican? Why, only that skeptically spiritual Robert Langdon - aided by a leggy physicist played by Ayelet Zurer (she helped make the anti-matter). Aided also by his mastery of symbols. He reads those statues like a roadmap, helping the police stay just a few minutes behind the killer who is leaving cardinals' corpses at a series of churches.

Howard keeps his cameras moving restlessly, a tactic meant to disguise the fact that, more often than not, nothing's really happening. Just a lot of shots of Hanks and Zurer jumping out of cars, striding purposefully from Point A to Point B - the swirling camera makes the moment appear dynamic, though it's really just on-location filler.

Otherwise, there's not much real action: a shoot-out in a church that mostly consists of an expert assassin casually eliminating Italian cops using a silenced handgun. There are a few horrific images - an eye that's been plucked from its socket and left on a linoleum floor, a few corpses that have been branded like Goth groupies.

In other words, enough violent imagery at regular enough intervals to keep that look of worry creasing Tom Hanks' brow. Hanks has lost the terrible hairdo from the previous film, replacing it with a bad middle part. Otherwise, he seems as bemused and disengaged here as he did in DaVinci Code.

The rest of the cast is stacked with red-herring actors, unsavory types played by such erstwhile villains as Stellan Skarsgard and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Meanwhile, the brave young priest, the voice of reason about the role of science in the church, is played by Ewan McGregor - Obi-wan Kenobi himself. The misdirection seems heavy-handed.

Where DaVinci Code offered a creepy, secret conspiracy within the Church, the plot here is decidedly less elaborate. The Illuminati are simply the terrorists du jour, the latest version of the crazed villain who won't be stopped. It's never quite clear why the Illluminati, who apparently strove to be the voice of reason and rationality, would turn to bloody vengeance and mass murder when it didn't get its way. In any case, there's much less than meets the eye in Angels & Demons.

Professionally outraged spokespeople to the contrary, Angels & Demons has nothing more incendiary to offer about the Catholic Church than the notion that, gee, perhaps you should try to be a little more open-minded. Heresy, I realize, but what can you expect from godless Hollywood?

For more of my reviews and interviews, visit my website at www.hollywoodandfine.com.

Comments

[copelli21]

I think Dan Brown's books were cotton-candy reading but both DaVinci Code and A&D were entertaining and it's a shame the wrong Director got these 2 films. He (Ron Howard) then hired the WRONG actors and what should have been a successful franchise....isn't.

DaVinci Code was straight up horrible and Tom Hanks was so dang boring, it was painful. The only thing worse was the actress they chose to be his sidekick. I barely understood a word that came out of her mouth and they had absolutely NO chemistry at all. It was so horrific to watch.

Both of these books read like an Indiana Jones type story-telling...the pacing isn't deep enigmas, but enough intrigue and puzzles to keep the pages turning pretty rapidly.....it's just art and religion, instead of tribesman and grails and crystal skulls. I know I am mixing movie and literature but.....with all due respect to director Howard, this was not his type of film. They should have given these scripts to someone more adept at adventure,action type films (i.e. Indiana Jones).

But instead we plod along with Tom Hanks and his terrible hair for God's sakes.....the most vanilla actor on the planet....

Too bad is all I can say. The potential was there.....religion, fantastic locations, art......

I would recommend skipping the movies and just get comfortable and read the books. I think you'll get much more enjoyment that way.

[kapalabhati]

I'm not surprised by a poor review. Da Vinci Code was unwatchable, though I read the book 3 times. Angels and Demons was even better and creepier. Tom Hanks, while an outstanding actor, is not, not not Robert Langdon. Too bad.

[JGatsby]

I was with you up until the part about Tom Hanks the outstanding actor. For me he peaked in Splash, if not Bosom Buddies. I do enjoy watching the catholics get all pissed off about this though, not realizing that they are giving the film invaluable free publicity. I never read the original books. I'll take your word that they were good thrillers. However, it does kind of bother me that the author so trivialized and dumb downed the idea of the original Gnostic Christians. All the Illuminati/Davinci/holy grail stuff is good fun but total BS. The Gnostics actually were quite amazing, far different from the Christian sect that turned into catholocism and tried to burn all the Gnostic writings as well as all the Gnostics. I would reccomend reading Elaine Pagels non-fiction "The Gnostic Gospels" as much more interesting than any of this stuff.