Duh Vinci Code
I think it was around the point during Angels and Demons where Ewan McGregor, playing a priest, was parachuting into St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican (after having exploded an anti-matter device inside a helicopter somewhere up in the clouds) that I turned to my wife Therese and asked: “Was the book actually as ridiculous as this?”
“I don’t remember,” my wife murmured.
Having fallen asleep during a gripping stretch of the first hour of Ron Howard’s sequel to The Da Vinci Code, I wasn’t quite sure whether or not I had segued into another movie — Quantum of Solace, perhaps, or Mission Impossible 3. Apparently, a secret society called the Illuminati threatening to destroy the four pillars of the Catholic Church wasn’t exciting enough to sustain this summer movie: they had to bring in 007 to finish the job.
Not that Angels and Demons is terribly bad. It’s actually sort of entertaining. I didn’t read the book (having sworn off Dan Brown after The Da Vinci Code; life’s just too short to read mega-bestsellers), but this one takes a few more predictable swipes at the Catholic Church (surprise, surprise), suggesting that some people will do anything to snag that papal ring.
Once again, we get Tom Hanks showing up as his likeable self, playing Robert Langdon, symbologist, called in by the Vatican police (the Swiss Guard) to help track down four cardinals who have been kidnapped by the Illuminati, and oh, by the way, they’ve got hold of some anti-matter device and are threatening to blow up Vatican City, if you happen to come across it. All of this against the backdrop of an upcoming Conclave, as the red-garbed College of Cardinals prepares to pick a new pope.
Langdon is assisted by Dr. Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), a physicist who figures out that the anti-matter — stolen from a super collider and looking like a little CGI storm trapped in a vacuum-sealed glass vial — is in the hands of the Illuminati, who are an underground anti-religious society of scientists who insist on leaving little paper trail clues everywhere for symbologists like Langdon to easily sniff out.
Watching Langdon pore over the clues — things like Galileo’s notebooks and cryptic Sistine Chapel tiles — you start to feel like you’re reading a Hardy Boys or Nancy Drew mystery back in grade school: all the little hints so carefully organized, and yet so easily pieced together by Langdon that you wonder how the Church has managed to resist any linguistic attacks over the centuries without Langdon’s help.
Except he’s actually a few beats too slow, most of the time, as when he shows up at one location to find one of the kidnapped preferiti (the likely papal candidates) being gnawed upon by rats; or another location where one is being roasted alive over a bonfire suspended above a church altar. You begin to think that Langdon should perhaps learn to speed-read those religious symbols, because his timing’s all wrong.
Meanwhile, you’ve got cinema’s Number One Most Likely Suspect, Stellan Skarsgård, playing Commander Richter, head of the Swiss Guard. He’s such an officious, unpleasant douche bag that you wonder why the case even needs solving; clearly, he’s the guy working with the Illuminati, right? Has there ever been a frame of a movie where Skarsgård has not looked sinister? So much for casting.
Then you’ve got McGregor as the Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (changed to Irish from the Italian guy in the book; go figure). As near as I can determine, the Camerlengo is the administrator of revenue and properties of the Holy Roman Church, though military experience, preferably in flying helicopters, parachuting and disposing of anti-matter, is also part of the job description.
McGregor displays a special zest here, chewing up scenery with his demented choirboy leer; you expect him to whip out that light saber at any moment. Sometimes being typecast as a Jedi master (or an actor willing to drop trou anywhere,anytime) works against you.
There’s one exciting scene in which Langdon, trapped in the Vatican archives, where, for reasons not worth going into, the power has been shut down, thus depriving him of oxygen, must find a way to smash through the bulletproof glass walls. Suffice to say, for a researcher, Langdon manages to obliterate a great deal of precious archival material in this movie.
Ron Howard, who directed the relatively subtle Frost/Nixon last year, is back in big budget thriller mode here: car chases, tension-filled crowd scenes at St. Peter’s Square, a pulse-racing Hans Zimmer soundtrack, and the lone Illuminati assassin taking out nearly every Swiss Guard in Vatican City in slow-motion with his silencer. He even got Tom Hanks to chop down his distracting haircut from The Da Vinci Code.
All in all, Angels and Demons is a serviceable summer thriller with very little for the faithful or unfaithful to chew on. That Brown’s scenario is designed to stick in the craw of the Catholic Church is a given; that the screenplay by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman will try to work in some placating language about “science and religion working together” like one big happy, dysfunctional family is very Hollywood. That Ron Howard will try to keep people glued to a pedestrian thriller by throwing in tons of flashy technology, meanwhile stacking the deck with a bunch of red herring villains, is just part of the game. In fact, there are so many red herrings tossed around in Angels and Demons that it’s almost like Jesus and the Multiplication of the Red Herrings. But those seeking a religious message here are advised to stick to their popcorn.
