Any good with puzzles? How’s your deduction skills? Pretty good, you say? Sure, but are they Robert Langdon good? Ask yourself this: Would The Vatican call me if a bunch of cardinals got themselves mixed up in a murder mystery? Bet not. But that’s exactly what happens in the Ron Howard-directed follow-up to the highly-successful The Da Vinci Code, once again calling upon symboligist and quasi-detective Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) into a crime-riddled conundrum involving works of ancient art, the Catholic Church, and a beautiful young woman. It’s Angels & Demons.
So, bad news for the Catholic faithful. The Pope is dead, a beloved and progressive man with millions of adoring followers. The Church prepares for the papal conclave to elect his successor, leaving the young Camerlengo, Father Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) in charge, assisted by Cardinal Strauss (Armin Mueller-Stahl). Meanwhile, In Geneva, at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Father Silvano (Carmen Argenziano) and Dr. Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) have gone and made the near impossible: actual honest-to-goodness antimatter. What could go wrong? Well, a bad guy (Nikolaj Lie Kaas), working for those pesky Illuminati, gets inside the facility and quickly offs Silvano, then steals one of the three canisters of the profoundly dangerous stuff and escapes into the night. Good for him. It’s all he needs to make a devastating bomb to blow up some very influential fellows. Guess where he’s heading. It ain’t Burning Man.
The bomb is hidden in a secret place somewhere under Vatican City, connected to the Illuminati and their suppressed position in the city. Naturally, McKenna calls in Langdon, who is already well known for his skills with the Da Vinci Code, but is not as welcomed by the Pope’s formidable Swiss Guard, led by Commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgård), he believing they don’t need outside help. Alas, Langdon eventually gets access to the coveted Vatican Archive and using his superior deductive skills, begins to unravel the secrets to where the bomb might be stowed. With him is Vetra, able to hopefully stabilize the antimatter once it’s found, therefore saving thousands of lives and the preventing the Holy City from becoming a rumble-filled crater. But can they find it in time?
Angels & Demons is a big budget epic that was part of a short-lived fascination with movies focused on large-scale treasure hunts with ridiculously elaborate clues, usually depending on one man with a unique set of skills to find them. Thank you, Nicolas Cage (and Indiana Jones, too). For that, this Tom Hanks-driven thriller does what it promises, the film a bombastic, over-the-top slice of hyper-drama that knows its audience and works hard to deliver exactly what it plans to be. Maybe too much. The movie is a wildly fast-paced convoluted exercise in overwrought that features plenty of cool tricks and twists but played out with no sense of suspense since Langdon spots and identifies every single clue the very moment he arrives on any scene. It gets a little silly in fact, at one point in the middle of a crowd of thousands as he looks down at his (Mickey Mouse) watch, he sees the clue. It’s like that throughout and ultimately sucks all the fun of out of the mystery.
Where Howard saves it all is with the casting, as Hanks of course, even as he delivers short, obvious dialogue, does so with great conviction. There’s hardly been a more appealing (non-action) leading man than Hanks in well, ever. Yes, the manner in which things are discovered are almost insultingly basic, but the manner in which it’s spoken is top notch. McGregor is also very good, feeling a little young for the part but taking hold of it very well. Mueller-Stahl is one of those actors one could watch read the instructions for how to make toast and have it be compelling, so whenever he’s on screen, he’s great fun. Unfortunately, Zurer is left far to the peripheral, running about expositioning things without much weight to her character, the only female in a large male cast barely getting much significance. It’s too bad because she’s quite convincing and really should have had more presence.
Let’s talk music. Composer Hans Zimmer is one of the industry’s most prolific and influential figures, his work dotting the modern cinematic landscape in more movies than you probably even know, from The Lion King to Inception and so many more. His themes for the Langdon Series is not quite as iconic as several of his more accessible titles, but there is some great stuff mixed in the score. The problem is that it is so hyperbolic, constantly trying to make every scene feel ten times more pressing than it really is, it becomes distracting. This is a film that should be less about the frantic countdown timer and more about the mechanics of solving a potentially very clever mystery. Zimmers’ booming music overwhelms much of the conversation, urging the audience to sit up on the edge of their seats, but it feels artificial and ends up deflating the possible momentum. Mostly.
However, if there’s one scene that gets it all right, it’s the incredible penultimate moment … and minor spoilers … where a certain character appears to make the ultimate sacrifice with a helicopter. This is Ron Howard at his absolute best, mixing visual storytelling with high energy, earned action and consequences, excellent music, and authentic suspense to make for a truly edge-of-your-seat sequence that hints to the greatness the film might have achieved. This moment is great cinema adventure that makes the movie worth a watch, even if the story progresses well after the point in order to keep needlessly pulling the carpet out from under our feet.
THE GOOD: A cool story and a raft of great performances give this some energy, with Hanks the driving force. Amazing details in the set design with some eye-popping visuals that really put us feeling like were in Vatican City help a lot to make this a possible win.
THE BAD: A poorly-handled mystery brought down by lackluster suspense and a slew of laughable coincidences make believing anything these people do feel authentic. There’s no taking it seriously when, for example, it takes a decree from the highest authority to allow Langdon (after literal years of requests) to get access to a top-secret, heavily guarded room, only to have the guy escorting him there allow Vetra to tag along. It’s things like this and a plethora of others that sour the fun.