Angels & Demons Review

Uh oh a movie review. And a week late to boot! Why then, should I keep reading Mike?

Well, perhaps you shouldn't, if that's the way you feel about it.

Anyway, yes I have walked around, wrote some other things (read: rants), but I have now seen a (relatively) current film. This is a very tough review for me, more so than its predecessor (or, chronologically according to the author, its sequel), The Da Vinci Code. First thing's first, however, and that is that Angels & Demons is in fact, quite a bit better than The Da Vinci Code. The plot, in my mind, is more suited to the silver screen than was the Code, but a few liberties were still taken, and not all of them I agree with.

In a nutshell, someone has stolen antimatter, a powerful substance that could raze the Vatican to the ground. This someone is claiming to be the Illuminati, a secret society that many had thought to be long since dead. Furthermore, they have kidnapped 4 cardinals at the start of Conclave, the ancient Catholic ceremony whereby a new Pope is elected. All of this is done by an unnamed assassin (or, as is the case in the book, Hassassin...more on that later), who proceeds to give clues as to where the cardinals will be killed. Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist, and Vittoria Vetra, whose assistant (also to be discussed shortly) was killed and who had in fact invented, per se, the antimatter, are called to try to track down the killer and end the church's nightmare. All the while they come across a relatively large number of minor, yet important characters, not the least of which is Camerlengo Ventresca.

Books, especially immensely popular ones, are almost always difficult to make into successful and, for lack of a better word, great movies, the Lord of the Rings trilogy notwithstanding. I feel, that for me, if you are brave enough to take on a popular book, like Angels & Demons, like the Da Vinci Code, and like, as I am sure I will be saying later this summer, Harry Potter, then you are obligated to provide us with the story and the details as we read them with MINOR changes for creativity. When I go to see a movie based on a popular book, I go to see it to compare my vision versus the filmmakers'. Did it look different, did it look the same, and why? When you leave out or change parts of the film, I attempt to look at it objectively: does this make sense for a MOVIE, and not a book? Or does it hurt the film, unnecessarily?

Angels & Demons possesses a little bit of both. For one thing, the movie moves at breakneck speed, something the book also did extremely well. You will get caught up in the mystery and the time will fly along with the dazzling lights of Rome and Vatican City. I did appreciate and like the focus that was put on the mystery, because I felt this was what separated Angels from the Code. The Code was, in my opinion, more successful because of its radical historical claims, whereas Angels was more about the adventure and the thrill. The movie captures this spirit.

Playing along with that the visual effects are virtually spotless. The computerized St. Peter's Square looks amazing and incredibly epic, as does the rest of Vatican City and Rome. The use of color I felt was much better here than in the Code. Furthermore, it was almost as if Mr. Howard was listening to my first review, where I really loved the ending, epic shot of Langdon standing over the Grail's final resting place. This film has about ten times the amount of epic, grand-scale shots in and around Rome and the Vatican, and it uses these to great effect. The movie feels quite epic in this respect (and the appropriate choir music does not hurt this effect).

Langdon, played once again by Hanks, also shines as his character seems to have much more vigor and is more similar, and more believable, to his character in the book. Whereas he was passive and careful not to step on anyone's toes in the Code (film), here he lays his beliefs out and his inner-academic comes out, something you would expect from a Harvard professor.

Now here's where I get a little critical. I will start with Vittoria Vetra, Langdon's companion for the majority of the film. To start off the film, her assistant was murdered at the science center CERN. However, in the book, it was her father, Leonardo Vetra, who was murdered in the book in order to gain access to the secret vault that held the antimatter. He was also branded with the first symbol shown, the ambigramatic Illuminati. This is Vittoria's motivation throughout the entirety of the story. She wants to avenge her father's death and find his killer. This is not present in the movie at all, and it is, in my eyes, a flaw. Without this, I do not feel that Vittoria has much motivation for going through the entirety of the journey with Langdon. Let me rephrase: I don't think she has as MUCH motivation. She may feel obligated because she helped create the antimatter. However, here is where the movie deviates again. In the book, it was Vittoria and Leonardo, alone in creating the large sample of antimatter that is stolen by the Hassassin. Therefore, she felt even more obligated to finding the canister. In the movie, there was a whole team of scientists helping her. Why didn't they come and help her?

Speaking of the Hassassin, he is a total and absolutely different person in the movie. In the book, he is a feral, almost crazed man who thrives on the kill and violence. He is a very evil character in the book. In the movie he plays himself off as little more than a pawn who got sucked into a grand scheme. For what? For money? In the movie he claims he did not want it to be like this, yet he appears to enjoy the violence. And the only apparent motivation for perhaps the largest conspired serial killing in history is money. I'm sorry, but that's just not believable.

I've talked of characters that have changed, but there was a rather important character left out. Maximilian Kohler is the head of CERN in the book and proves to play a vital role in the plot. In the movie, he is nowhere to be found. He is a very interesting character too, one I looked forward to seeing on-screen (read the book to see why). But, I suppose I can overlook it.

The one other moderate, and sort of irksome, changes are the ending, specifically with the camerlengo's "return" and someone remaining alive who died in the book. In the book it is much different, but I will not spoil it for those who have neither read the book nor seen the movie.

There are other things as well, that to me are moderate but, as I said, if I objectively look at it as a movie, are not really that important: no Hassassin-Langdon fight, Langdon is not trapped under rubble saved by his Mickey Mouse watch (which, thankfully, he does sport in the movie), CERN is never really shown, Langdon never travels to CERN, Langdon is not in the helicopter in the end (he is in the book), the Camerlengo's speech is longer (and surprisingly much more logically sound in support of the church) in the book, the Cardinals break Conclave and leave in the book, and the fifth Illuminati brand is much different (and much more intriguing) in the book, the movie considers Angels & Demons to have happened after The Da Vinci Code, which is not the case. As I said, there are a lot, but these are minor and do not really hurt the film.

Even with all these complaints, as I explained, the spirit of the book carries over into the movie. The thrill of the mystery, the suspense, and the Path of Illumination are all intact, as are almost all of the historical references. The effects are dazzling and quite well-done, as they should be for a high-budget film; still, I found them more tasteful than I had anticipated, a nice surprise. I also found myself much more enthralled and intrigued by this film more so than the Code (which is odd, considering the Code's subject matter). Still, there are a few problems that bother me, most notably the absence of Vetra's father, a key element to the story in my mind.

This was an incredibly tough one to rate. It is obviously better than The Da Vinci Code, and the score will reflect that. But there are two numbers (one of them is surely NOT the sacred Illuminati number) that keep popping up and I cannot pick between them. To be naughty or to be nice. This is the absolute highest the score could be, but, as it is said, "Let angels guide you on your lofty quest."

4/5