Angels & Demons
a blessing and a curse

By Frank Ruggiero

Comedian George Carlin once said, “I was Catholic until I reached the age of reason.”

True to Carlin’s wit, the age of reason and Catholicism are pitted as foes in director Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons, the follow-up to 2006’s The Da Vinci Code.

With the controversial nature of Da Vinci, the Catholic Church essentially branded Angels & Demons “anti-Catholic” before shooting was even completed. However, the deceased Carlin’s rhetoric bears more of a threat to conservative Christian ideals than Howard’s latest thriller ever could.

Put simply, Angels & Demons is a frenetically fast-paced murder mystery. Short on substance, high on action, it’s little more than an entertaining diversion, more than could be said for its predecessor.

Tom Hanks (Forrest Gump) returns as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon, summoned by Vatican officials to Vatican City, where four high-ranking cardinals have been kidnapped by an enemy claiming to represent the ancient order of the Illuminati – men of science, such as Galileo and Bernini, spurned by the church centuries ago, who seem to have grown vindictive since.

The kidnapping comes at a pivotal time for the church, shortly after the pope has unexpectedly died, and while its highest ranking cardinals are engaged in conclave, the process in which a new pope is named. Also, the four missing cardinals are the preferiti, those most likely to be selected, and the kidnapper has vowed to publicly kill one each hour on the hour.

Furthermore, a highly volatile and destructive substance called antimatter, stolen from a Geneva laboratory, has been hidden in Vatican City and set to detonate at midnight, as the kidnapper says, to signify science defeating religion.

Langdon and physicist Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer, Munich), who helped develop the antimatter, must follow the legendary path of the Illuminati throughout Rome in an attempt to rescue the preferiti, uncover the culprit and save Vatican City. Using clues from ancient writings in the Vatican archives, the duo hits the trail running and never lets up.

Howard (Frost/Nixon) delivers a film that differs significantly from its source material. Dan Brown’s novel, Angels & Demons, was written before his bestseller, The Da Vinci Code, which sent church folk into a tizzy over its assertions that Jesus was romantically involved with Mary Magdalene and even sired a child.

One might say Howard played it safe this go around, but the truth of the matter is the source material is safe as it is. Angels & Demons makes no assertions about religion, nor does it attack Christianity.

For the film’s sake, the prequel is considered a sequel, and screenwriters David Koepp (Spider-Man) and Akiva Goldsman (The Da Vinci Code) have taken understandable, but not entirely excusable, creative liberties to condense 480 pages into a 138-minute film.

Unfortunately, some of these involve character depth and development, as well as the novel’s theme of science vs. religion, which is minimized for the film. What made for a compelling subject on the page is not well adapted to the screen, and the film suffers for it, coming across as somewhat empty.

Also empty is the Langdon character, short on the charm that makes Tom Hanks an endearing actor. The plot moves at such break-neck speed that there is little time for Hanks to grow in his role, much less develop the character.

While Zurer acts decently in a rather forgettable role, it’s Ewan McGregor (Trainspotting) as the pope’s chamberlain (or camerlengo), who offers one of the film’s livelier and more memorable performances.

Though the adaptation suffers for character, production, on the other hand, is to be admired. With the Vatican putting the kibosh on Howard’s requests to shoot on location, designers went to extraordinary lengths to authentically recreate St. Peter’s Square and the Sistine Chapel. The results are uncannily masterful.

The filmmakers did, however, shoot in Rome, and as Langdon and Vittoria rush through the Eternal City, we’re treated to a speedy tour of its many churches, monuments and fountains.

As the film received flak from the church, Hanks simply defended it as a whodunit. In that respect, Angels & Demons works, though conceivably more so if one has not read the novel.

Angels & Demons, rated PG-13 for sequences of violence, disturbing images and thematic material, is playing at Regal Cinema 7 in Boone.