2009 | U.S. | 138 minutes (146 extended)
Director: Ron Howard
Writers: Tom Hanks,
Cast: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård
Distributor: Sony Pictures Entertainment
Cdn video distributor: Columbia/Tristar
Angels & Demons is the follow-up to The Da Vinci Code — based on a book written prior to its release — and replaces intriguing religious study with more conventional thrills. It is also surprisingly more entertaining. My hunch is, having David Koepp on board as a co-screenwriter helped a lot.
The uniqueness of the first film was its exhaustive overview of Christian history. It pieced together various historical facts with compelling conspiracy theories in its imagined quest to solve the greatest myth of all-time: the holy grail (except, of course, it wasn’t a cup in that instance). Jammed into a thriller template, the characters senselessly ran all over Europe — chased by police and a secret society — as if lives depended on them solving the damnedest mystery known to man within 24 hours. Even then, it stopped short of confirming its hypothesis, leaving our hero pretty much back where he started.
Having exhausted much of the tantalizing history of the Christian/Catholic faith in the first story, there’s not much to play with in Angels & Demons. Instead, it invents a mystery thriller that uses the Vatican as its setting and, this time, it’s given a practical time-sensitive puzzle: solve it before midnight or else four cardinals will die and the Vatican, plus much of Rome, will blow up. That’s a thriller.
The action sequences are still in the implausible realm — as in the first story, there are countless just-in-the-nick-of-time set-ups — but the Church vs science debate that drives the story, the Vatican setting, as well as its unique violent threat (a sample of stolen anti-matter) adds a huge level of interest over the typical terrorist-threat story-line.
The story also introduces some red herrings as to who may be behind it all, and the final reveal is both surprising and frustrating (the ultimate motive proves far less interesting than originally suggested) but the journey there is still a fun ride despite the illogical speed with which people travel (across Rome in about 5 minutes) and urgent quests that prove unnecessary (e.g. the secret journals which seem so important, but are never read and later forgotten).
What’s especially nice is that, at the end of the story, our hero Prof. Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is given good reason to pause and ponder his religious beliefs (something The Da Vinci Code only fleetingly addressed). He clearly teeters on the line between logical skepticism and faithful acceptance — the film doesn’t force us to decide which way he should fall — but his “save the day” efforts certainly add emotional weight to this struggle, and might be useful fodder for future adventures.
- Theatrical release date: May 15, 2008
- Video release date: November 24, 2009
- Production Budget: $150 million
- Worldwide Box Office: $485,900,330
FUN ALTERNATIVE: It’s strange there are so few films centred around the Vatican; a sovereign city-state with its own economy and security force. The Godfather, Part III is largely viewed as the weakest entry in the Godfather Trilogy, but it’s this setting that helps keep it intriguing. It makes it plausible that a mobster like Michael Corleone (Al Pacino) would throw gobs of cash at the Catholic Church, and gain their blessing — all in the vain hope of washing away his past sins.
It uses the unusual death of Pope John Paul I as a means to suggest how such a deed could play out, but the location alone — and the back-room dealings it dramatizes — are compelling enough on their own.