Cast: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgaard

Director: Ron Howard

Screenplay: Akiva Goldsman

Running time: 2 hrs 18 mins

Genre: Action/Adventure



CRITIQUE:


If the Vatican were the National Board of Film Critics and condemns The Da Vinci Code, we’d agree with them. After that dreadful, slapdash cinematic debut of a Dan Brown adaptation, there isn’t much to look forward for a material that portends running around holy sites, worriedly gawping at sculptures/paintings, following clues and breaking hokum codes whilst we’re escorted with a hero who’s so devoid of any persona, whose facial expression seem to be automatically set in an eternal scowl. Robert Langdon is really a cross between a charmless Indiana Jones and an irritatingly encyclopaedic documentary commentator. And since we’re done with suicidal albino monks, now we’ve progressed into the granddaddy of all religions – the Vatican. Here we witness red-robed cardinals, as we dash around CGI-generated Vatican halls and studio-built vaults (the mother of all dioceses forbade Angels & Demons to film on site) complete with Tom Hanks’ tourist-guide epithets. Because we are completely uninformed, if not stupid, we are told about the obvious state of affairs in the film’s opener where a journalistic narrator broodingly elaborates the process of papal election. Cue abduction of four cardinals, the resurrection of an ancient anti-religion cult the Illuminati, and the chase around the churches of Rome begins. At least this is a dramatic development from its heavy-lidded predecessor, where Ron Howard clearly realises that a popular fodder like this does not need a mile-length scroll of expositions. While Langdon’s walk-and-talk is considerably lesser, this is still ridden with some clunky, self-explanatory lines that one can’t help to snort on their popcorns with “the Illuminati is seeking retribution!” For something that is hellbent on destroying the Catholicism, this movie does not really quite make its mind up whether it’s for or against the Church.


VERDICT:

Angels & Demons works as a fast-paced thriller, but only that. It is ridiculously ridden with plotholes and filled with as many deux ex machinas as Langdon’s trivia expositions. Whilst we can peer through deadly-serious looking cardinals, we can’t overcome the fact that when four of their colleagues were kidnapped, they don’t give a damn and just get on with the bloody election. And the Church hates Langdon’s skin so much that they have to recruit him for some Scooby Doo mystery tour around their own headquarters.



RATING: C