Mini Review - Angels and Demons

It’s been a while since I talked about the Da Vinci Code. Number of reasons, my schedule being full with other movies, the fact that these films rely heavily on religion, a subject in which I’m not very well versed and I am not myself religious, and finally because I found the Da Vinci Code itself quite boring and had little desire to return to the trilogy in any hurry. But, the time has come and I’m ready for it.

Released in 2009 it made $486m on a $150m budget, which is respectable but it didn’t exactly set the world on fire critically, with only a 37% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, still a marked improvement over The Da Vinci’s Code’s 25%.

The story focuses once again on Robert Langdon, he’s doing some foreshadowing before being taken to investigate a mystery, because he’s the only person in the world they could turn to. Thankfully, Mrs Jesus is not in this film. Recently, some, *sigh* ‘anti-matter’ had been stolen from the Large Hadron Collider. And it’s supposedly the return of the oldest enemy of the church, the Illuminati.

Meanwhile, the death of the pope has gained media attention, and everyone is dying to know who will be made Pope. Unfortunately, the 4 most likely candidates are all abducted, with a message saying one is to die every hour, branded with the 4 elements of science, all in secret Illuminati chambers around Rome with relation to the 4 elements…. Yeah, this plan is kind of stupid…

I’ll say straight up it’s a marked improvement over the last movie, by making the story more simplistic, they’ve cut the need for a lot of the boring exposition the last one had, which is then replaced by action and more world-building as we see the Conclave discuss matters and continually fail to vote a leader pending the return of one of the favourites.

I like Tom Hanks in this and it goes a long to help me ignore his lack of arc in this story, I guess there are a couple of points where people question his faith but it doesn’t really go anywhere so I’m discounting it as an arc. Still, he’s clever and works out all the convenient clues and drives the narrative.

Ewen MacGreggor I enjoyed as Father McKenna, along with Ayelet Zurer as Dr Vetra, a scientist from the Large Hadron Collider who serves as the female sidekick of the movie. She’s smart, but besides one revelation, she doesn’t contribute a lot to the plot.

However, whilst it is better paced, it’s still padded. There’s a scene about halfway through the movie with Robert trapped in the Vatican archive with the power out and no oxygen being pumped in. It’s the first time where we see his underwater breathing put to use, but it is paid off better later on and this entire scene could’ve been cut from the movie without any major repercussions. The movie could’ve been around the 2-hour mark.

Little time is spent developing the villains, the Illuminati being a villain makes some degree of sense because they are old enemies of the church but it’s really just 2 guys. The assassin isn’t even given a name and just carries out most of the deeds of the movie and then there’s the twist villain. Many people have said the problem with Disney twist villains is you essentially dump all the demonstrated character traits in favour of something else, and it’s the same problem here.

The film is shot, acted and directed nicely, and carries a story with more suspense, being less complicated and boring. However, a lot of contrivances and lack of any major character growth, especially with the villains, prevent me saying this movie is great.

Rating 65/100