Angels & Demons

Angels & Demons

Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgard, Pierfrancesco Favino

Directed by: Ron Howard

Reviewed by: Conor Flynn







Unless you’ve been sleeping under a rock for the past six years or so, there’s a strong chance that you will have heard something about the near insane kerfuffle caused by Dan Brown’s highly controversial novel ‘The Da Vinci Code’. Without spoiling it for those who slept, the central premise to this fictional novel made quite a few assertions about Christianity which didn’t go down well with the Catholic Church in particular. The film version soon followed in 2006, causing an even wackier hullabaloo, with the Catholic Church and the film itself on one side, and a perplexed cinema audience on the other. For those who hadn’t actually read the book, the fuss seemed overblown; the film itself, for a whole slew of reasons, was bad. To sum up, its biggest fault was that it was trudged and ponderous to an extreme. Angels & Demons is the follow-up film, which has caused the exact same commotion, but is it as awful as the first film?

The story begins with the death of the Pope and the election of his successor. Things take a sinister turn when four of the cardinals up for election are kidnapped and held by a group claiming to be the legendary Illuminati, an ominous organisation bent on toppling the Vatican. The Vatican police call in Robert Langdon (Hanks) who soon uncovers a plot to blow up Vatican City using a stolen antimatter device…

Angels & Demons suffers from the same problems as its predecessor, the biggest of which is its footnote style exposition. Nearly every conversation within the film goes to cumbersome extremes to explain what is going on. Thankfully, this time round, the exposition is punctuated by action scenes that keep the momentum going. There are also wild lapses in logic through-out the film; for example, the contradiction that Langdon must solve a series of riddles and clues laid out by a foe who ultimately signposts the way to their own capture.

Tom Hanks, as usual, is very watchable. He is ably supported by a great cast which help to ground the more preposterous elements of the film, particularly the ludicrous showdown which has to be seen to be believed. Despite an excessively long running time, the film is excellently paced and, despite numerous flaws, is satisfying to watch from beginning to end.

If you can manage to overlook a number of glaring lapses in logic, believability and continuity, Angels & Demons can be tremendous fun. In short, it is a deeply flawed, yet vastly superior sequel.