Angels & Demons

It wouldn’t be fair to Angels & Demons, the new Ron Howard movie based on Dan Brown’s novel, to merely compare it to The Da Vinci Code, the old Ron Howard movie based on Dan Brown’s other novel. But such comparisons are sadly unavoidable when you consider that Brown essentially wrote the same book twice, and Howard has dutifully extended that same courtesy to his adaptations. If you loved Da Vinci the movie, I can’t imagine you won’t lose yourself in geek glee while watching Angels. On the other hand, if you hated the first movie, you might find yourself enjoying the second just a wee bit more. For one thing, Tom Hanks got a haircut.

OK, that’s really not fair. Angels & Demons is actually a significant improvement over The Da Vinci Code, although said areas of betterment will be most noticeable to those who watch the movies back-to-back, an experience I would not recommend. For one thing, the movie has a genuine sense of urgency to it, as well as scattered scenes that feel like they belong in a thriller. (By contrast, Da Vinci was mostly a ponderous celebration of the fact that the adaptation had finally arrived – it was self-referential and too proud of itself and absolutely sterile.) On the whole, however, watching the sequel on its own creates many of the same feelings as watching Da Vinci did, three years ago. Strip away the thin veneer of augmentation and the movie is still the story of an overly talky college professor who won’t shut up while he escorts a pretty brunette around some cool European historical sites, and dodges bullets.

A&D concerns the Vatican traditions surrounding the installment of a new Pope, and a terrorist plot to undermine that proceeding with kidnappings, assassinations, and a bombing. Shortly after the death of the current “progressive Pope” (the first sign that this movie is 100 percent fiction), Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is summoned from Cambridge to Rome to advise the Swiss Guard (Vatican City’s police) on the snatching of the Preferiti – the four Cardinals most likely to be in line to become the next Pontiff. Responsibility for the Preferiti’s kidnapping has been claimed by a sect of the Illuminati, a centuries-old cabal whose blood feud with the Catholic Church is right in Langdon’s wheelhouse. He’s an expert on the Illuminati, ancient religious symbols, and other neat bits of art-history trivia that people pretend to be interested in at parties, but secretly wish they’d never asked about once the blowhard starts yammering.

The Illuminati have announced their plan to kill one member of the Preferiti each hour for the next four hours, and 60 minutes later – at the stroke of midnight – they’ll blow up Vatican City using a sample of antimatter pilfered from a supercollider in Geneva. Of all the scientists working on the antimatter, it coincidentally falls to the smoking hot one, Vittoria Vetri (Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer), to run around Rome with Langdon as he explains every detail of the city’s history in excrutiating detail … er, that is, as he tries to solve the mystery of the cardinals’ disappearances, and generally save the day.

In the spirit of Brown’s wonky puzzle-thriller style, I’ll point out that the last two paragraphs contain the two-word key weakness of Angels & Demons. Give up? It’s “Tom Hanks.” If Howard’s involvement in these movies is a mystery worthy of Langdon’s sleuthing talents, whatever possessed him to cast his old Splash buddy as the brainy symbologist is a true head-scratcher. Hanks is a fine actor, and he’s certainly proven himself capable over the years of handling serious drama as well as goofball comedy, but his everyman demeanor is in direct conflict with the erudite, bookish intelligence Langdon is supposed to possess. Not to mention that he’s about the worst choice imaginable to play an action hero – even one who, a la Indiana Jones, leads with his noggin instead of his fists. (Not for nothing did Brown describe Langdon in his books as “Harrison Ford in Harris tweed.” 

Once you accept Hanks as Langdon it’s easy enough to acknowledge the benefits of a plot that involves an actual race against time (The Da Vinci Code was a meandering mess), but even there Angels & Demons scotches the deal. The bulk of the action takes place over four one-hour segments, with each following the same pattern: Langdon gabs gabs gabs about this statue / apse / ancient text. Langdon discovers a previously unknown fact hidden in the stuff that other non-Langdon scholars have studied for centuries. Langdon talks about the discovery some more. Then, with about two minutes remaining until the deadline, Langdon races over to the location of the next of the Preferiti, and discovers something grisly. Four times for all this is simply too much repetition. It slows down the film while making Langdon look like the last guy you’d want leading a manhunt, rather than the first guy you’d fly across the Atlantic to fetch for his one-in-a-million knowledge base.

The picture is opulently filmed, with the same rich palette used in Da Vinci, but this tony production has one more fatal flaw: All the fatalities. Characters are stabbed, shot, and burned alive; their throats are slashed; and several innocent victims are branded with the mark of the Illuminati and esoteric symbols. Angels & Demons is rated PG-13. It should not be. That obscene error is the worst thing about this mediocre movie.  4

Erich Van Dussen is managing editor of Rochester Film Journal. Contact him at info@rochesterfilm.com.