A superior film to The Da Vinci Code...

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2009)

I haven't read any of Dan Brown's novels, so when seeing the movies based on his books, I went into them without knowing what they'd be like. I hadn't seen The Da Vinci code at the cinema, but instead watched it on DVD. It didn't hold my interest enough to really pay that much attention to it. When it was on TV recently, in preparation for the cinematic release of Angels & Demons, I watched The Da Vinci Code again. It still wasn't that great, but at least I managed to pay more attention to it. This time around, with Angels & Demons, I decided to go see the film at the cinema (or, more accurately, someone wanted to see the film and I was just going along with them).
I think, as a whole, Angels & Demons was just a better-told film. It wasn't as slow-paced, plodding along with a drawn-out conclusion like The Da Vinci Code was. Even in this film's slower moments, it kept me interested. That was due, in large part, to Ron Howard's direction. In lesser hands, the film probably would have been deathly dull, but Howard manages to keep your eyes transfixed to the screen, even when there's a very talky scene happening. The rest of the credit for the film's success goes to the actors. Tom Hanks seems much more at ease in his role as Robert Langdon this time around. He's a likable enough character (even if he does remain somewhat mysterious), but Hanks makes him a character where you actually *care* about what happens to him. I never saw what the big deal was with his hair in the first film, but any who feared that his 'do would be the 'demon' from the title in this film need not fear, as his hairdo's shorter now.
The biggest improvement with this film over its predecessor is Langdon's female counterpart. This time he's paired with the intelligent and beautiful Vittoria Vetra (much more well-cast than Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu in the first film). Ayelet Zurer is far more fitting a partner for Hanks's Langdon. Not only is she much more well-suited to the role, but both characters are on more equal footing. They make quite the team, and Vittoria proves that she can indeed keep up with Langdon (and as Tom Hanks himself said on the radio recently, like every beautiful particle physicist, she wears Manolo Blahniks whilst running on cobblestone). It's a bit of a shame, then, that unlike the beginning and end of the film, the middle is spent with her character and Langdon separated. After enjoying the two of them on screen together so much in the beginning of the movie, I must say that I was disappointed that they split up for what seemed like quite a long time during the middle. The chemistry between the two actors is immediately evident, and you can tell they're at ease/comfortable with one another (even if their characters tend to differ on their approach to certain things, though this allows for some amusing moments between them). The two of them also obviously got a lot of exercise during filming, given all the running around that's involved.
Ewan McGregor does really well in the role of Camerlengo Patrick McKenna. Like Hanks, he made me like his character for the majority of the time, and I think the movie benefited from this. He definitely gave a solid performance, and I thought McGregor owned the last third of the film. While there are other rather important characters in the movie, I felt these main three mentioned above were the most memorable. It's a shame Ian McKellen was absent (as he was the one bright spot of the The Da Vinci Code). Unfortunately, the Assassin (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) wasn't nearly as intriguing a villain as Paul Bettany's albino monk, Silas, was in the first film. Stellan Skarsgård (who I didn't particularly like in the last two Pirates of the Caribbean movies) wasn't overly likable here either. Much better were the characters of Inspector Olivetti (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Chartrand (Thure Lindhardt, who shares quite a memorable scene with Tom Hanks at one point).
This movie has a sense of humour that the first film didn't, but it's certainly not a laugh riot either, as there are also several gruesome scenes. The FX used in this movie illustrate the way CGI *should* be used (to help *add* to the film, rather than distract from it). The climax of the movie is quite a memorable one that I didn't see coming, and so long as you don't have a problem with reading more than a few subtitles, you should enjoy this film (Hans Zimmer's score helps sell the suspense). Angels & Demons doesn't take itself too seriously (which is a plus, given the far-fetched circumstances), and is rarely dull. Apart from finally finding out just what exactly "anti-matter" is, the other thing I learned from this film was that being a Symbologist wouldn't be a bad job, especially when you get to hang with a beautiful enigmatic Italian scientist...if only it were actually a job!