No thrilling mystical hunt.

Rating: 5/10 (12 July 2009)

Much like the Da Vinci Code, Angels and Demons fails to do justice to the much more impressive books. For me Angels and Demons is the better book and more suited to the big screen. It is disappointing to say that Angels and Demons really does not deliver.
Tom Hanks and Ewan Macgregor do good jobs with a script so abrupt and poorly designed it is in coherent to the viewer. Ayelet Zurer who plays Vittoria Vetra is sadly just a 'hanger-on' the particular purpose or real significance of her presence is never really examined, and appears to be only there to ask questions or to answer them to fill in gaps within the screenplay.
The biggest failure is without doubt the screenplay. The opening seems particularly rushed with it moving from the Vatican to a CERN research lab rather messily. There is no explanation to events and although at times it appears the story has been slowed for our better understanding it doesn't assist or enable us to be as concerned as Robert Langdon. Indeed some of the verbal dialogue is at times undecipherable and painfully leaves you without knowing what has happened. Angles and Demons does not delve into the heart of the matter, that is the battle between religion and science, it gets lost in the messy narrative.
The crisp cinematography and score are excellently done and help heightened the aesthetics but without the internal structure(plot)seems out of context.
The film does drag and it is a real shame that it could not piece together Dan Brown's work better to produce a thrilling mystical hunt. Maybe it is fair to say that adapting such books to screen will always be hard to deliver but it really shoots way-lower on the expectation level.