If the current pattern holds true, then the next adaptation of a Dan Brown novel may actually be good so long as Tom Hanks gets a buzz-cut.
I’m speaking, of course, about the obvious correlation between the length of Hanks’ hair and the quality of the movie said hair appears in. You may recall the dead cat perched atop his character, Robert Langdon’s Harvard educated noggin in 2006’s “The Da Vinci Code.” Well, its sequel, “Angels & Demons” features a slightly cleaner cut Langdon resulting in a slightly better film.
The basic narrative of this installment, which is based on the novel that came before “The Da Vinci Code,” but is played as a sequel on the screen, involves a frenetic, ticking time bomb manhunt through the streets, cathedrals, and apparent labyrinth of underground tunnels of Rome over more-or-less a 24-hour period. The hunted is an elusive but omnipresent agent of an ancient secret society of intellectuals that favored science and logic over religion known as the Illuminati.
If you’ve ever known a regular listener of Art Bell’s syndicated radio show “Coast to Coast AM,” or a paranoid schizophrenic, then you’ve probably had to sit through endless claims that the Illuminati not only still exists, but has been behind every major political election, assassination, revolution, terrorist attack, and natural disaster of the last 300 years. So what business does this shadowy organization have in Rome? Why, Retribution for centuries of anti-intellectual dogma spewed from the Vatican, of course. And how will they exact their revenge? With Science! More specifically, the once only theoretically plausible culprit for the existence and continuing expansion of the universe–anti-matter. An anti-matter bomb in fact, that sits directly below the Pontiff’s chambers.
Although Langdon exquisitely employs his arcane knowledge of symbology to take down the most powerful organization in human history (that’s the Illuminati, not the Church), Hanks’ freshly-cut locks still aren’t short enough to revive this lackluster, overly violent piece of radically improbable hooey.
Director Ron Howard is certainly adept at framing elements of light and color in such a way that draws out their natural mystery and beauty, and is as technically proficient as most, but the story is too convoluted and relies heavily on wordy exposition and astronomically implausible coincidences to keep the story rolling. And for a movie that so aggressively attempts to attach such salient meaning to symbolism, it sure lacked oh, I don’t know, symbols.
Howard and his screenwriters, David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman further handicap what might of been an exciting ride by pausing every time things get going for Langdon’s obligatory science vs. religion pontifications that are mainly manifested in clunky one-liners that fail to ever actually address the issue. Koepp and Goldsman seem to believe that the very act of mentioning both science and religion within a relatively short period of time is equivalent to a profound, exhaustive, and revelatory exploration of humanity’s struggle with the source of its own existence.
Despite its considerable flaws, the first act of “Angels & Demons” is passable entertainment, but the rest of it isn’t worth the small fortune theaters charge these days to see it on the big screen.
