Blu-Ray Review: Wordy ‘Angels & Demons’ Fails to Illuminate

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CHICAGO – Give Ron Howard an intimate character study like “Frost/Nixon,” and he’ll knock it out of the park. Give him a sprawling plot-driven thriller like…well, let’s face it: anything written by Dan Brown, and he’ll be consumed by the enormity of his subject. Yet while Howard’s “The Da Vinci Code,” failed on a human level, it did succeed in highlighting the tantalizing questions raised by Brown’s text, particularly the implications of historical distortion throughout the centuries. When the characters were allowed to simply analyze the story’s inherent mysteries, the film took flight.

HollywoodChicago.com Blu-Ray Rating: 2.5/5.0
Blu-Ray Rating: 2.5/5.0

Unfortunately, “Angels & Demons” never has a chance to truly engage, which is partly due to the fact that the material itself is less philosophical, and more on the level of a conventional thriller. That isn’t to say that Brown’s story (which was originally the prequel to “The Da Vinci Code”) isn’t a hell of a good yarn, and Howard’s film is just good enough to illustrate how great of an experience reading it would be. As in all of his epic projects (starting with “Willow”), Howard becomes so overwhelmed by the sheer scope of his material that his sense of dramatic rhythm flatlines. While Howard filtered Brown’s exposition into flashback upon flashback in “Da Vinci Code,” here he simply gives his returning star monologue upon monologue.

Angels and Demons was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on November 24th, 2009.
Angels and Demons was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on November 24th, 2009.
Photo credit: Sony Home Video

Tom Hanks has never looked more bored onscreen, and never been more boring. After two films, his Professor Langdon (the theological Indiana Jones of Brown’s novels) hasn’t been given a shred of depth, and is used simply as a vessel for explanatory dialogue. As in “Da Vinci,” the only character allowed any intriguing texture is the one whom the plot is most dependent on. In this case, it is Camerlengo Patrick McKenna, played by Ewan McGregor, and looking like the suavest, chicest holy man in the Vatican. He doesn’t have the wit of “Da Vinci’”s Sir Teabing (who was played to the hilt by Ian McKellan), but McGregor still has the advantage of being the only person in the movie with more than one note to play.

Angels and Demons was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on November 24th, 2009.
Angels and Demons was released on Blu-Ray and DVD on November 24th, 2009.
Photo credit: Sony Home Video

It’s almost redundant to discuss the plot in a review since the film itself consists solely of the plot. Any entertainment value the film has to offer is generated from its twists and turns, yet the film is so rushed that the audience never has the opportunity to feel the thrill of discovery with the characters. It’s wall-to-wall noise and fury, unaided by Hans Zimmer’s obnoxiously over-the-top score, desperate to speed the pulse of indifferent viewers. In a film as murky and wordy as this, a lack of humor can be deadly, and in all 138 minutes of “Angels & Demons,” I counted one laugh (it comes after a nice set-piece involving Hanks’s escape from an airless room). Howard’s reverence to the material ends up sucking the life out of it, much like George Lucas’ lead-footed approach to the “Star Wars” prequels. On the most fundamental level, the film does entertain, but only to the extent that the SparkNotes version of a heavily plotted thriller ever can.

“Angels & Demons” is presented in sparkling 1080p High Definition (with a 2.40:1 aspect ratio), and accompanied by English and French audio tracks. The 3-disc set includes both the theatrical and (eight-minute longer) extended versions of the film, an entire Blu-Ray disc of special features, and a digital copy that comes equipped with a trial version of the “Hans Zimmer Music Studio Powered by Sequel 2.” Most of the extras seem geared toward theology students rather than moviegoers. Viewers can follow Langdon’s “Path of Illumination” in a series of featurettes and factoids that offer solid historical detail on Vatican City. There are diverting mini-docs on everything from CERN to ambigram art, yet none of them illuminate the fascinating implications of Brown’s text. In one featurette, Hanks calls the film, “a fantastic game of trivial pursuit.” Too bad the audience can’t play along.

‘Angels & Demons’ is released by Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and stars Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer and Stellan Skarsgard. It was written by Davis Koepp & Akiva Goldsman and directed by Ron Howard. It was released on November 24th, 2009. It is rated PG-13.

By MATT FAGERHOLM
Staff Writer
HollywoodChicago.com

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