Angles and Schemin'
Written: May 15 '09 (Updated May 15 '09)
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Product Rating:
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| Bang For The Buck |
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Pros: nice pictures, a decent vehicle for a travel-guide suspense thriller
Cons: predictable, outlandish, easy to snore through
The Bottom Line: This episodic thriller is high on gore, low on novelty.
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| bilavideo's Full Review: Angels & Demons |
Five minutes into this film, I knew how it would end; I just didn't know how many loops through the maze it would take to get there. Angels & Demons is Dan Brown's follow-up to his hilariously controversial The Da Vinci Code (or as I'd like to title it, Dan Brown Can't Write). Brown has a way of gilding the lily till his purple prose sounds like an entry from the Jay Petersen Catalogue. But at least with The Da Vinci Code, Brown had something to peddle: a secret so embarrassing to Catholics that they (or that version of them that exists in the minds of Protestants) are willing to kill to keep quiet. By now, if you haven't had at least one water-cooler discussion over whether Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish rabbi in his thirties, might have gotten married, you've never seen The Last Temptation of Christ.
This time out, Brown is hustling more Catholic conspiracy theories, but - as one Catholic official put it - what he's delivered is "harmless." That is, unless you're the Pope. In Angels & Demons, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is called in by the Vatican to help it solve a mystery of its own. This time out, crazy Catholics aren't out snuffing folks who believe Jesus tied the knot. Instead, the Church itself is under fire from an old enemy: The Illuminati.
Never mind history. Forget what you know - or at least what you can Google. Forget that there really was a gang called the Illuminati, and that these folks - from the Enlightenment Era - were pamphleteers and boosters for the scientific method. In the hands of Brown, the Illuminati are a dangerous secret society, driven radical by a Church that lost the ability to screw it over some five centuries ago. Suddenly, and without provocation, the Illuminati have decided to give the One True Church a good, swift kick in the crucifix. Taking advantage of the period between the death of the last pope and the naming of a new one, The Illuminati kidnap the four clerics on the College of Cardinals' short list of candidates.
In the real world, this would be a job for the Italian police - or Interpol. But in Dan Brownsylvania, it's time to call in the symbologist from Harvard - just in case the culprits continue leaving the kinds of clues that belong in an episode from Scooby Doo. As an interrelated subplot, the atom smashers are missing some antimatter, which the crew from CSI:Vatican City suspect will be used to blow the Holy See to, well, Kingdom Come. Cue Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), the hottest scientist off a nerd's swimsuit calendar, though - to be fair - not quite so hot as Audrey Tautou (mortal sin). (Oops: I've done it again, committing adultery in my heart.)
To accomplish his investigation, Robert Langdon will need a little cooperation from Men with (Funny) Hats. Fresh off his role as Obiwan Kenobi, the Jesuit-looking Jedi from the Star Wars prequels, Ewan McGregor plays Camerlengo Patrick McKenna, the priest who helped the late holy father with his ruby red slippers and who is now more "in charge" than Al Haig during Reagan Season. While the rest of the penguins are dragging their feet - and not so trusting of the guy who almost blew the whistle on Jesus's JFK years - McKenna wants to protect the four holy hostages. After all, these scientists are dangerous people. You never know what they'll do next. If they'll snuff a defenseless stem cell, they might be the kind to start another Crusade or Holy Inquisition.
On the other hand, he might not be too far from the mark. Somebody sure is sadistic. Angry that the Church once branded suspected illuminati with a hot iron (right before killing them), the scienterrorists of this film are only happy to return the favor. Not since The Passion of the Christ have I seen so much gratuitous carnage - and in a film that didn't kill off Paris Hilton. Brown, whose characters speak as if they'd escaped from a Harlequinn novel, likes to generate viewer interest by having his baddies do gruesome things. This film is no exception. Screenwriters, David Koepp (Spider-Man) and Akiva Goldsman (The DaVinci Code, A Beautiful Mind) go out of their way to push past Brown's weakness for Dick and Jane dialogue, punctuated by tabloid violence. But the film is still heavy on the perfunctory dialogue.
I'm not sure if everyone has this issue, but I have a kind of ON/OFF switch in my head, and it engages whenever I find myself watching a scene whose outcome fails to define where things are going. More than once while watching this film, I found myself nodding off. In fact, this particular journey seemed so trivial, I found myself chafing at the time it took to get to the film's last scene, which didn't disappoint my guess as to where things would end up. But along the way, I found myself suppressing the desire to throw something sharp through the screen and run out of the exit, breathing a sigh of relief that I'd gotten part of my life back.
Is everything about this film so unpleasant? Of course not. Director Ron Howard brought in production designer Allan Cameron who has worked on prior Ron Howard films, such as Willow and Far and Away. Cameron's work helps make this an easy film to watch. Hanks gives a decent performance but he has less charm to sell. In the first film, Hanks could blow us away with pointers on why symbology is an interesting field. Here, however, Howard assumes that everybody will just get it. The result is a film with less soul. In fact, the reduction of Hanks to a continuing character who finds meaning in symbols is reflective of this film's achilles heel: Who cares? While the film does include a voice-over lecturing the audience about the Illuminati, the film doesn't really take us into that society. It simply uses the trappings of such to have a reason to sick Hanks onto the trail of the bad guys. Clues seem to be arbitrary making this film more like National Treasure. The result is an endless series of arbitrary mazes that are not fascinating or brilliant so much as tedious and perfunctory.
But it did one thing. It made me pray for the closing credits.
Recommended:
No
Movie Mood: Die-hard Fans Only
Viewing Method: Other
Film Completeness: Looked complete to me.
Worst Part of this Film: Duration
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bilavideo
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Member: Bill Kilpatrick
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