Angels and Demons

Rating: 7/10 (4 April 2010)

With "Angels and Demons," a film about Professor Robert Langdon and Vittoria Vetra's race against the Illuminati to save Vatican City from an anti-mater bomb that could wipe everyone out, proves once again the Ron Howard is not the great film-maker many people say he is. Take just the beginning of "Angels and Demons." We see currents of electricity move up wires, but big deal. That special effects trick has been shown so many times before that it seems boring and repetitive now. The other scene, which shows director Howard showing off, reveals the floor of the pool so that we have an idea what it is like for Professor Langdon (Tom Hanks) to swim under water. But again, do we really need to know? We can just as easily to go a swimming pool and find that out for ourselves. There is also no character development in "Angels and Demons." Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) are the same people at the beginning of the film as they at the end, in spite of all the tumultuous things that have happened to them. The same is true for the villains in this story. There are also certain flaws with plot development of this film, especially toward the end.
Yet at the same time, "Angels and Demons" is not a bad film. It imitates some of the best scenes in the Steven Spielberg Indiana Jones series: studying of archival sources, opening tombs, and watching Langdon get himself dirty while going through a secret passage way or sneaking through a vent. In short, this film is very good at showing the wonder of going into strange places and discovering new things. This side of the film, in many ways, compensates for its flaws such as those illuminated above and makes "Angels and Demons" entertaining right up to the end.