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Angels and Demons a fun film, if not quite heavenly
ANGELS AND DEMONS
Directed by Ron Howard
Starring Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, and Armin Mueller-Stahl
138 minutes, Rated PG13 (sequences of violence, disturbing images)
Angels and Demons, a film based on Dan Brown's 2000 novel, is just as talky as The Da Vinci Code an earlier movie based on Brown's 2003 novel. Angels is stuffed with exposition and lectures and religious history -- or fiction, depending on your viewpoint.
If these are problems for you, then you'll suffer apoplexy with Angels and Demons. On the other hand, if you enjoy esoterica about the Roman Catholic Church, plus centuries-old intrigue and revenge within and without the well-costumed church, you're going to love Angels and Demons.
Furthermore, unlike the sprawling plot of The Da Vinci Code, this film respects classical literary unities of time and space: It takes place on one day with a midnight deadline and, mostly, in Rome. That's one reason it's a better movie.
Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist, is the hero in both books/films. In Da Vinci, he stumbles on a murder, and to solve it, he studies pentagrams, the Fibonacci number sequence and the clandestine organization Opus Dei.
In Angels, the Vatican calls Langdon to solve the disappearance and threatened murder of four cardinals, preferred candidates to be the new pope. He must study anagrams; the altars of Earth, Air, Fire and Water; and another clandestine group, Illuminati. Throw in some stolen anti-matter, and the stage is set for another round of Science v. Religion, leading to the lecture parts of the screenplay by Akiva Goldsman (who also wrote the screenplay for The Da Vinci Code) and David Koepp (co-writer of the screenplay for the marvelous Ghost Town).
The lecturing Langdon is played by Tom Hanks as a chip off his wooden acting block from The Da Vinci Code; frankly, he creaks a little here. Ewan McGregor sharply plays Patrick, the deceased pope's assistant. Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer is the anti-matter expert, providing a much stronger presence, even running in heels over Rome's cobblestones, than delicate Audrey Tatou did in Da Vinci.
Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon) directs Angels and Demons, as he did The Da Vinci Code, with little invention. For example, cameras swirl around Fr. Patrick as he describes the world spinning out of control.
Admit it, we don't go to these movies for the cinematic innovations: we go to solve puzzles, to see a sea of cardinal red robes and to identify regalia from a church known to make a monstrance out of a molehill. We get to revisit the Vatican, here reproduced by a crack crew right up to the Sistine Chapel ceiling and down to the Archives. We go to gasp and gag (thankfully, it's not in Smell-O-vision). We enjoy the travelogue to the Eternal City, even if Angels does take an eternity to watch.
Another confession: we go to laugh (Is old Langdon really trying to rock a bolted bookcase out of the floor to shatter an unbreakable window before he runs out of oxygen?), because what might be glossed over in print can be hilarious on film.
Angels and Demons is not the best movie of bloody intrigue about the Roman Catholic Church, but its seductions are worthy of suspending belief and enjoying the ride.
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