Angels & Demons (*½)

Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Armin Meuler-Stahl, Stellan Skarsgard
Seen: May 15th 2009

*½ Out of ****

Being a fantastically entertaining novel, one could be forgiven for thinking the film could be even half as good. And for a second time, Ron Howard has us duped. Because while this film is definitely better than The Da Vinci Code, the first Dan Brown book to be made into a film, it is only marginally so. The acting, this time round, is slightly better, with the actors looking like they want to quickly check the book off-screen for their next line only in some scenes, not all of them as in The Da Vinci Code (TDVC).

Tom Hanks is back as Professor Robert Langdon, the expert Harvard Professor of symbology who made so much trouble for the Catholic church in TDVC. Once again the film starts off with a rather brutal murder, but this time we do not see a naked body, only a bloody eye. Which is the first of many a brutal scene to fill the film. 5 men are branded on their chests, leaving gaping red wounds with four words and one picture glaring back at the viewer. Earth, Fire, Air and Water, the four words, the four elements of science, the Illuminati’s fight back against the church under the guise of science.

The four men in question are the Preferiti, the four Cardinals most likely to follow up the recently deceased Pope, and the story regards the chase between their execution sites against time. At the hours of 8, 9, 10 and 11, a Cardinal is murdered, and Langdon has to, with the help of the Gendarme Corps of the Vatican City State and the Swiss Guard find these sites before the murders occur. This is all good and well, but to me it truly seemed that they continually stood around, changing clothing, chatting, whatever, between every two successive executions. Until 10 minutes to each hour that is. At that point the very dramatic music and urgent running would start in a belated effort to save a Cardinal’s life. But these men’s lives are much too unimportant to save, and as each hour comes and goes there is one more dead body on the way to the final bang of the story. The Illuminati have also planted a bomb in the Vatican, capable of blowing the entire centre of the Catholic faith to kingdom come. This bomb is made of Anti-Matter, a substance so volatile that a collection of it smaller than a golf-ball can accomplish the aforementioned devastation.

Visually Angels & Demons is absolutely breathtaking, with excellent production values. Scenes shot at CERN, where the world’s largest Hadron Collider resides are grand in scale, the Sistine Chapel is beautifully portrayed, multiple pieces of art had a friend of mine swooning, and even the brutal murders are brilliantly staged (especially the Fire execution and accompanying fire-fight). The presentation, however, isn’t all that a movie should hinge on, as such small fare as Donnie Darko (to name but one) has shown over the years, and Angels & Demons just doesn’t over anything other than flashy visuals and an if not predictable twist, one that is so unnecessary and by the time you reach it irrelevant that you just don’t care anymore.

Tom Hanks has set a high standard in decades gone by, but here he simply shows up and expects it to be enough. A point of light is the beautiful Ayelet Zurer, who plays Vittoria Vetra, a CERN scientist accompanying Professor Langdon on his hunt for the Anti-Matter bomb. Ewan McGregor is well-cast as Camerlengo Patrick McKenna, as is Stellan Skarsgard as the Head of the Swiss Guard, and the supporting Italian cast members round things out on a perfunctory note. Angels & Demons then, is all bang, but very little buck.