I’m not a fan of Tom Hanks or Ron Howard and I also hated The Da Vinci Code so to say I wasn’t enthused to see the sequel, Angels and Demons would be an understatement. It starts off a little slow but somehow I found myself getting sucked into the mystery surrounding the disappearance of 4 Cardinals on the night of electing a new Pope. This is where I put in the disclaimer that I’m not a religious person so most of this stuff went completely over my head. But I found it sort of intriguing. The problem with a movie like this is that in the past writers like David Koepp (screenplay) and Akiva Goldsman (screenplay) would do a thriller where the bad guys would have very simple manageable plots that as an audience you can just go with. It’s going to be hard to do this review without spoiling the film.
These days the bad guy has to be a freaking genius to be able to explain all the various plan details. Look at everything that Tony Alameda on 24 would have to know way in advance in order for his Bad “Guyness” and master plot to make any semblance of sense? The same thing occurs here where the bad guy would have to know well in advance that Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) the man the church hates would be called in and if not him, someone else – maybe one of the scientist who helped create it, Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) would be able to put all the pieces together in time to stop an Antimatter bomb from destroying Vatican City. Yes, I said an Antimatter bomb.
You say, what is this? A Sci-Fi movie? Why does the Vatican have a research facility that’s capable of making Antimatter? All of the Antimatter bomb plotting is secondary to the idea that said bad guy also has to make sure that all of the people who are up for replacing the Pope also gets bumped off. You really have to be clairvoyant bad guy to foresee and plan for all of these eventualities to work.
While Vetra and Langdon don’t have a romantic involvement, they are just two people thrown into this impossible 4 hour situation there wasn’t much chemistry between Hanks and Zurer and what was with all of Hank’s weird facial expressions and the way he moved his mouth, it looked like he had some kind of tick going on. But at least he got rid of the hair that he was sporting in the last movie. I really liked Ewan McGregor’s portrayal of a young Priest, Camerlengo Patrick McKenna who is trying to get the old guard to moderate their views with regards to science. I love McGregor in everything he’s in, he’s just one of those great chameleon like actors and the fact that you rarely see him in films helps maintain that mystique.
At over 2 hrs, Director Ron Howard manages to maintain the pacing enough to keep you interested in what’s going on because everything in the story is time locked and as each event happens, they only have 10 minutes to stop the next one. Angels and Demons has a plot that requires you to suspend disbelieve in order to properly enjoy the movie, which is ironic since the movie is all about belief and faith. But I found myself getting sucked in.
Final Grade B
EM Review
By Michelle Alexandria
Originally posted 5.15.09
I think there's an obvious correlation between the length of Hanks' hair and the quality of the film.