Angels and Demons: “Run, Langdon, Run!”
I wanna go back to Apollo 13. Most of that movie I just sat in a comfy chair.
Rating: 5 out of 10
There is always a line in the sand drawn between the movies and the people who go to see them. The line represents how seriously the movie is meant to be taken, on one side stands the production company and director who set the tone, while on the other side is the audience who chooses how they want to receive the film. The main battle seems to surround the idea of taking lessons or supposed “truths” learned in the film and applying them to the outside world. Most of the time this line is cut and dry (if the movie is not classified as a documentary, take it with heaping grains of salt; if it is a doc, take with slightly less salt). Yet when a movie has the audacity to delve into the world of religion, you can bet people are going to flood out of the woodworks to take the film and its creators to task for even the possibility of misrepresenting some aspect of their faith. The precursor to this film, The Da Vinci Code, was hounded by protests all over the world, some even authorized and organized by the Catholic church, but the film still trucked on and made over $758 million dollars worldwide. Now, with some water under the bridge, the church has decided to take a different tactic with the release of the new Dan Brown thriller, Angels and Demons. The furor started to bubble up, but word came down from on high that the film was seen as “silly” in the eyes of the church and protest and calls to ban it from theaters were wholly unnecessary. I could go into a whole different discussion about the over blown reactions to movies with religious subtexts, but I’ll save that for another day. For now, let’s take a look into the newest effort from much-acclaimed director Ron Howard and one of the members of the Hollywood royalty, Tom Hanks.
Angels and Demons centers once again around Robert Langdon, who is brought in by the church to help uncover the identity of kidnappers who have taken four high ranking bishops hostage. As the puzzle pieces are fit together, the picture reveals a much more diabolical plot to not only attack the Catholic church philosophically on its fundamental beliefs, but also physically by blowing up Vatican City. Langdon must run frantically against the clock to try and find these men before they are killed and discover the deadly device before thousands of innocent people are sacrificed in the crossfire of a religious war.
The first thing that should be noted about this film is its drastic improvement in many aspects over its predecessor. The Da Vinci Code was stunning in its ability to remove the tension and tempo from the book, which alone was one of the biggest factors for making it such an incredible best-seller. Learning from his past, Howard injected incredible amounts of tension into this episode in the life of Robert Langdon. The only downside is he might have gone a little too far. Feeling like a double-sized episode of 24, the pace of the film doesn’t slow down from the moment Hanks is recruited until the villain is finally revealed. Unfortunately, when the momentum should be rushing us into the final curtain, it slows down and drags us painfully through the last twenty minutes. Also, while I am all for ramping things up, this type of tempo can be draining when kept for such a long time. Most of my friends who watch 24 already feel winded when each episode finishes and that’s only after 44 minutes.
There was also a slight disconnect in believability in the continuing effort to keep the energy high because it seemed Hanks only had mere minutes to get from one location to the other again and again. Here’s the rub: it is made abundantly clear during the movie that people are pouring into the city by the truckload in anticipation of the new pope being named. The idea that Hanks and his compatriots could navigate the ancient Vatican City streets and catacombs in such short time is a bit ridiculous.
While those things took something away from the film, there were some really fun moments and solid work done by the cast which deserves mention. Hanks continued to school all other actors in how to play a leading man with intelligence instead of brawn (luckily this time without the crazy hair). He has an incredible talent for emoting frustration while not completely losing his cool and few things are as enjoyable as watching him outwit one character after another. Bringing added weight to the cast, Ewen McGregor comes on as the personal secretary to the recently deceased pope, which inherently leaves him as the man in charge until the new pope is elected. McGregor gave off the charm and dedication of a man of the cloth, but he balanced it the fervor of one who only sees a single path in front of him. If those two weren’t enough to give the cast the needed gravitas, Howard brought on two actors known for their unshakable seriousness, Stellan Skarsgard and Armin Mueller-Stahl. Skarsgard plays the gruff captain of the Swiss Guard, constantly doubting and rebuffing any deductions made by Hanks, while Stahl plays a cardinal with his eyes set on the throne and has no problem pulling rank over the younger and unqualified McGregor. Both actors brought an enjoyable sense of depth to their roles and kept the audiences continually guessing as to their true motives.
Recommendation: Angels and Demons is beautifully filmed and is certainly a step up from The Da Vinci Code, but it still ends up leaving a bit to be desired. Maybe third time is the charm since Dan Brown will soon be releasing his newest installment, The Lost Symbol. Wait and see…
[via 
DandyID
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