Angels & Demons (2009)

O Masterpiece

O Excellent

O Good

X OK

O Mediocrity

O Avoid

Review by Jason Pyles / May 15, 2009

Unless you’ve already read Dan Brown’s novel “Angels & Demons,” watching the movie is like playing a new card game — it’s a little confusing, sometimes boring, and it seems like the rules are being made up as it goes along.

Though “Angels & Demons” preceded “The Da Vinci Code” (2006), it is set as a sequel. But the chronology is more or less irrelevant, since Brown unfolds more adventures of symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), rather than rehashing his hero’s previous scavenger hunts.

In “Angels & Demons” the pope has died, and it’s time to select a successor. But four cardinals — all prospective papal contenders — have been abducted from the Vatican. When the church discovers that the abductor(s) might be a centuries-old secret society called the Illuminati, it seeks Langdon’s sleuthing expertise.

The professor must do his thing and frantically find clues around Rome before each cardinal is publicly (and thematically) executed an hour apart from one another, until the final hour when a technological terror will be detonated somewhere in Rome.

The misleading trailers for “Angels & Demons” appear to suggest that it will contain encounters with supernatural creatures, but the only angels or demons in this movie are statues and human beings. This is not a horror movie; it’s a “diet” thriller — at best.

Hollywood is sometimes unkind to the Catholic Church or specialty groups like Opus Dei, which associate themselves with the church, or the Illuminati, who openly despise it. With its implications that suggest that the church is politically corrupt and even murderous, some Catholic viewers might be put off by this film.

And at the same time, “Angels & Demons” is also likely to alienate its non-Catholic viewers who might find themselves marooned in the sea of church jargon, some of which is in Italian or Latin.

When judging a film adapted from a book, we commonly say “the book was better,” because we prefer our vision of things over someone else’s conceptualization. Plus, the number of pages between book covers is more generous than the number of minutes between movie credits. Screenwriters are compelled to preserve the original source material while transforming the story from written words to filmic images. Books tell; films show.

But the question is not whether “Angels & Demons” is as good as the novel; the question is, does this adaptation stand on its own? The answer is — it’s OK — but it limps like a monk wearing a cilice.

Directed by Ron Howard

Tom Hanks / Ewan McGregor / Ayelet Zurer

Mystery      138 min.

MPAA Rating: PG-13 (for sequences of violence, disturbing images and thematic material).