Angels & Demons ** (rant)

So, I finally got around to seeing Angels & Demons today and I thought I'd write about it now before I forgot about it tomorrow. It was truly, a forgettable film.

As a fan of the Dan Brown books, I was once again disappointed to see that an attempt to translate another one of his stories onto film had failed. I wasn't expecting much; I'd heard about poor reviews. But I'd hoped that because this story was a fast-paced, page turner it was going to be an improvement on "The DaVinci Code" movie. Boy, was I wrong.

In this film, Tom Hanks reprises his role as Professor Robert Langdon. This time he is called to Rome in a time of crisis: The Pope has just died and four Cardinals (the front-runners to take the Pope's place) have been kidnapped by a secret brotherhood (a 400 year old enemy of the Catholic Church) called the"Illuminati". Langdon, with the help of a Priest, played by Ewan McGregor, and a physicist, played by Ayelet Zurer, must follow clues throughout the Vatican in the hopes of preventing the Cardinals' deaths and the impending detonation of an anti-matter bomb.

As each hour passes, a different Cardinal's life is at risk. Time is of the essence! Langdon must try to figure out different clues in time to make it to various destinations in the hopes of saving each of them and saving Rome.

Sounds like it could be good right?

So, what went wrong?

Well... although I was happy to see Tom Hanks without the weird hair from the first movie, he still played the 'religious symbologist expert' as the most boring person in the world. As the Langdon character, Hanks, with monotone voice and permanent grave expression, once again stopped in front of every statue and symbol he came across and told whoever was standing beside him what it meant (regardless of whether or not they were interested).

For me, all the religious history and conspiracy theories, worked in the Dan Brown books: It's what made his novels both entertaining and informative. On screen, however, it just didn't work in either film. I know Brown didn't create an 'Indiana Jones' kind of professor character in his stories, but Hanks and the screen writers of "Angels & Demons" could have at least made Langdon seem a little bit excited about his life's passion. Instead, they had the audience listen to, and follow, a guy who probably puts his class to sleep with each lecture. -I'm not a huge Nick Cage fan, but I would rather watch "National Treasure 2" again (and it was painful the first time) than see Professor Langdon solve a puzzle or try to save anyone ever again.

I'm not going to blame everything on Tom Hanks. (I actually love Hanks and I own a lot of his movies). The whole movie was slow and boring. And this is what I didn't get...Here's a movie that has constant time pressure: lives depend on reaching certain destinations by a certain time. And yet even the way the film was shot was slow. Several times in the film, as Langdon and others are driving around to save a life, the camera drifts away from the action of the chase and slowly floats off, up over the sky, to show us the roof of a church or a crowd of people protesting something. Who cares! Keep us in the car and make them drive faster! (And, of course, Langdon could always find the time to painfully describe the origins of some clue he held in his hands while sitting in the passenger's seat).

The movie also had a lot of continuity issues for me. Somehow within each hour, Langdon would have the time to go somewhere, research something and still make it to his destination. And as the film goes on he's getting shot at and at one location almost set on fire (you would think that would make the film more exciting -but trust me, it doesn't). All of these scenes are in Brown's book and while reading them, they were somewhat believable. But on film, it just didn't make sense. At one point, Langdon is trapped somewhere (I don't want to tell you everything in case you're actually going to see the movie after reading this) and yet once freed, he has seven minutes remaining to get to the newly discovered location. While watching this scene, I thought "hasn't he been stuck in there for at least an hour?". But in hindsight, maybe it just felt like hours because everything he did or said seemed to take forever.

Another complaint I have about both films (don't worry, I'm almost done) is about the female co-stars. In each movie, Hanks shares scenes with pretty brunettes who have no personality nor seem capable of making any kind of facial expression. They're serious and boring and don't make any impression with the small screen time they inhabit.

Finally, I have to say I preferred "The DaVinci Code" to "Angels & Demons" for one reason: "The DaVinci Code" had a really good bad guy. Paul Bettany did a superb job playing a creepy, albino monk in that film. Watching him flog himself made me feel sick, but at least it made me feel something.

In "Angels & Demons" there's no such sensational guy to hate. Without telling you who the villain is, I will tell you that once he's found out, a room full of Cardinals stand together and stare him down with no dialogue. I guess Ron Howard, the director of the film, was hoping that scene of silence would be tense enough for the audience to go "oooohhh". Instead, I rolled my eyes and muttered under my breathe "you've got to be kidding".

In case there's any doubt, I do not recommend this movie. But I am still a Tom Hanks/Ron Howard fan. So I would suggest that instead of going to the theater to see "Angels & Demons", spend a night in and rent "Apollo 13". They both did a great job with that one. And even though I'm not sure why one of the co-stars, Ed Harris, got nominated for an Oscar for simply wearing a beret in "The Truman Show", he definitely deserved the nomination for his work in "Apollo 13".( As the "lucky vest" wearing optimist, you can't help but cheer for him. He's one of the many elements of the movie that make it enjoyable).