Review: ‘Angels and Demons’

Ron Howard and Tom Hanks have returned to bring ‘Angels and Demons’ to the big screen. This book-to-screen adaptation is the follow-up to ‘The Da Vinci Code’ both written by Dan Brown. For those of us that have not read the books, myself included, the underlying thought is a hope that the books are far better than the movies. I remember seeing ‘The Da Vinci Code’ in the theater, which is odd because what I remember most is the struggle I experienced in trying to stay awake through the movie. Maybe I missed something by not reading the book first, but the movie had little interest outside of Paul Bettany’s performance.

‘Angels and Demons’ does not suffer the same dismal fate of boredom, but that’s not to say it doesn’t have it’s problems. For the most part, this movie is a perfectly acceptable action/thriller on the level of what would be accepted from any mediocre-to-average film from the genre. Technically, the film successfully keeps our attention and moves along at a fairly productive pace. This pace does slow down considerably as the two-hour eighteen-minute running time progresses. If nothing else, the film is filled with plenty of fascinating relics and architecture to gander, providing us with an alternative remote tour of the Vatican City.

The acting as well is acceptable on the same level, but is not anything of significant note. Surprisingly, Tom Hanks does not seem to garner the same presense on screen in this movie as he usually does, nearly becoming a set piece than the star at times. No single performance stands out, but Ewan McGregor is enjoyable with his Irish accent. McGregor plays the “Karma Chameleon”… at least, I enjoy calling him that. He is actually called the “Camerlengo” Patrick McKenna, essentially the right hand man to the Pope himself. For those of a Catholic background, feel free to correct me if I misinterpreted this position, but I think it gets the point across. A large part of what makes this movie somewhat interesting, and then ultimately makes this movie a failure lies within this character, but not McGregor’s performance.

One of the biggest under-achievements of ‘Angels and Demons’ is it’s formulaic presentation. One could simply take ‘National Treasure’ and remove the plot of Nicolas Cage hunting down long lost American historical items planted by the Masons and transplant it with Tom Hanks hunting down secret religious and scientific symbols planted by the Illuminati. ‘Angels and Demons’ fells very familiar in this way, which adds to the fact that the movie is very predictable.

Much of the story’s mystery is lost due mainly to the lack of suspense and the excessive use of blatant foreshadowing and extrapolation of information we need not know in advance. For those who have read the books, I can only imagine this makes the film even less interesting. Even given that the film is nildly entertaining as an action movie with a far-fetched concept, the straw that broke the camel’s back was the ending. Of couse, I am not going to reveal this (in respect of those who have NOT read the books) but I felt the scene in which the film “should” have ended was deprived of it’s relatively powerful nature by another. The chronological ending, I guess it was maybe 15-20 additional minutes, is both ridiculous and far less effective. Upon viewing ‘Angels and Demons’ and reaching the above said ending that “should” have been, I would have given the film a solid three star rating out of five, but with the added portion at the end of the film, it drops to a less respectable two and a half stars.

[Overall: 2.5 stars out of 5]