The first half of Angels & Demons is chatty, dull and bereft of strong tension. In other words, it’s The Da Vinci Code. Thankfully, the film picks up in the second half, delivering an adequate stream of tension and twists, including a few legitimately thrilling scenes. But after the model of pacing that was last week’s Star Trek, Angels & Demons is grandfatherly by comparison.
Retooling Dan Brown’s novel as a sequel to The Da Vinci Code (as opposed to taking place before it), Angels & Demons has Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks, The Great Buck Howard) once again involved with the church. This time he’s doing his best to save the Vatican from destruction after a canister of potentially explosive antimatter is plucked and hidden in the city.
Someone from the secret society of the Illuminati is threatening to destroy the Vatican using the antimatter, as well as kill four cardinals in a matter of hours – and it’s up to Langdon to solve the case.
While the setup might seem to lend itself to more excitement than The Da Vinci Code, it takes its sweet time doing so. The first hour bears all the problems that plagued that movie, as enjoyment of the film in this portion is directly correlated with enjoyment of history lectures. It seems almost like the filmmakers only changed Da Vinci’s scenes of lengthy historical dialogue from being spoken while standing to being mentioned whilst walking. That’s not much of an upgrade.
Another problem with Da Vinci was a lack of a strong sense of danger, an issue which troubles Angels, but only until the cardinal killings kick into full gear. There’s a clear point where the film takes off: a set piece involving a cardinal hanging above a fire and a pistol-wielding hitman. It’s the first time Angels feels dangerous, and after the deadly boring (no pun intended) first hour, it’s a blessed (pun intended) release.
After the burning cardinal sequence, Angels amps the pacing up and lowers the intricate historical detail. Hans Zimmer’s (Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa) pounding score, which comes off as desperately trying to convince viewers the film was exciting in the first half, becomes reasonably appropriate in the second half. It’s still problematic how much archaic minutiae Langdon has to stop and point out for the plot to proceed, but much less so when he’s saying those lines in times of imminent physical danger.
What screenwriters Akiva Goldsman (I Am Legend) and David Koepp (Ghost Town) have failed to do is give an edge of life-or-death importance to Langdon’s historic musings. Objectively, they are critical in the context of the film, but their consequences are often not immediate.
The classic Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade understood how to weave in history so the audience was on the edge of its seat, hoping the academic figured out the puzzle. A good example is the scene in Crusade where Jones has to walk across collapsing alphabetic tiles over an abyss in the order of God’s name. One missed letter and he instantly dies – that intensity of conflict is almost never present in Angels.
Also not in attendance are many strong characters. On the plus side, the enigmatic hitman (Nikolaj Lie Kaas, The Candidate) has some surprising moments which deepen his character, and Ewan McGregor (Deception) effectively channels quiet strength as the Camerlengo Patrick McKenna. But in general, there’s not much in the way of character nuance or depth, a problem most glaring with Langdon.
Despite Hanks’ best attempts to fill out the thin character with a humorous nature and practically fanboy-ish excitement over historical documents, he remains a very simple and dull persona. The film toys with the notion of giving him an arc of finding faith, but doesn’t commit to it.
In comparison to Da Vinci, Angels certainly can be deemed an improvement. The important thing to remember is that’s not saying much. Half of an entertaining movie is not the same thing as a successful movie, and Angels’ flaws are significant.
It will be interesting to see what luck director Ron Howard (Frost/Nixon) and company have with this second Dan Brown novel adaptation, as audiences may be less drawn to the film without the controversial theological content of Da Vinci as a lure.
But hey, if Da Vinci could make over $750 million worldwide, Angels should break the bank.
Dan.benamor@gmail.com
2 out of 5 stars