Genre: Drama, Mystery, Thriller, Detective
Director: Ron Howard
Actors: Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skargard, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kaas
Runtime: 140 min
Budget: $150 million
Year: 2009
The Roman Catholic Church mourns the death of the Pope in Rome. Until the College of Cardinals selects a new Pope, Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) assumes day-to-day control of Vatican City. Reporters, nuns, priests, and other faithful all crowd into Saint Peter's Square, waiting for the white smoke from the conclave. Four candidates were chosen. However, before the voting, all of them are killed one by one. The killer leaves clues that seem to say that he/she is from the Illuminati. Strangely though, the Illuminati was long thought to be extinct. Who is the mastermind? Who revived the Illuminati? What do they want?
Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), accompanied by beautiful physicist Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), must travel throughout Rome unraveling the carefully hidden signs to solve the Illuminati's threat, save the four preferiti, find the hidden antimatter bomb and find out the shocking truth.
If you enjoyed the DaVinci Code, then you will undoubtedly enjoy Angels and Demons as well, as the movie is made pretty much with the exact same style as the previous film with the same plenty of twists and turns throughout to keep you very interested, but it is a little faster paced. Perhaps, we can consider this as a serious drawback because such films need some "discussion time" to digest the information. Thus we don't have such time, it doen't have an easy-to-follow plot.
It's a good book-to-movie adaption though some true fans of the book might feel differently towards the movie's drastic changes. Many things were trimmed otherwise this would be a 4 hour movie. Many things were also changed to give the movie a fast pace. But still they've left enough real history to make it seem very believable.
The performance of actors is excellent. Tom Hanks does seem younger his age, he even dares to show his naked body. Ayelet Zurer perfectly suits to the image. But, no doubt, McGregor's performance here is one of the highlights of the film. He plays Patrick with such glint in the eye, with nuances enough to let you know there's more than meets the eye. It'd be diffucult to believe he turns out to be the villain, having murdered the old Pope and arranged the whole thing.
The movie can serve as a great tourism video of Rome and Vatican City, as it is full of breathtaking on-location scenes. Beautiful cinematography and relevant music definitely will make you think of a visit to the eternal city of Rome.
Catholic reviewers have called Angels & Demons harmless, because it didn't dwell on its many controversies. Nevertheless the church've made attempts to intervene. Anyway, that big battle is totally lost in the movie. The church is shown as being a collective of good men who are made to suffer for the sins of evil and misguided men who wore their colours and even a few who have infiltrated their modern ranks. It's a reconciliation of science and religion. Do you remember the words of Cardinal Strauss: ''Religion is flawed because man is flawed''? What makes Angels and Demons absolutely work is it's conclusion. Think of it.
07.09.2010 
