The 3:00 AM Review (Special Procrastination Edition): "Angels & Demons"

[Note: I failed to post this last Friday morning, because I had finished typing it at 4:00 AM, and I was absolutely tired. So here you go. For my first Project Summer post, I hope to type up some thoughts on my first-ever viewing of The Da Vinci Code, which was last Tuesday (the 12th). I also hope to elaborate a bit on how both of the Robert Langdon movies compare to each other. Also, my apologies in advance for the potential incompetency of my review. Like I alluded to above, I wrote this between 3:00 AM and 4:00 AM last Friday morning. So make of it what you will.]

Ron Howard and Tom Hanks reunite for their second Robert Langdon screen adventure, following 2006's The Da Vinci Code. But how do they compare? Well, as simply as I can put it, they're wildly different types of movies... but that doesn't make one necessarily better than the other. Da Vinci was primarily about its theories, purported conspiracies, and symbology insights, but the main focus of Angels is action and suspense, as Langdon races across Vatican City and Rome, not only to save kidnapped cardinals targeted for murder, but also to retrieve a canister of dangerous antimatter. It's because of these tasks that the movie proceeds at an unrelenting pace; the majority of the movie takes place during a six-hour period, and Howard displays the current time as often as an episode of 24. Da Vinci had a much more relaxed pace, as it took its time to explain its historical theories; Demons trims down its history lessons and crams them in between action sequences, with walk-and-talks so hectic that you'd think Ron Howard was trying to one-up Aaron Sorkin. Granted, while the pacing of Angels is different than Code, it has the advantage of being a lot more consistent than before; one problem I had with Da Vinci was that it shifted awkwardly between theory and expositional scenes and action beats. (Also markedly different in Demons, compared to Code: the camerawork, which moves around at breakneck speed. Sometimes, I wondered if I was watching Michael Bay's Angels & Demons. ;) ) Along those lines, Howard forgoes many of the more unique (or dare I say, risky) storytelling tricks that he used in Da Vinci in order to generate a more streamlined summer blockbuster, or perhaps even to combat some of the negative critical reception of Code. Gone are the elaborate flashbacks throughout history, which is somewhat understandable, as Angels is a movie about the here-and-now. Also gone is one of my favorite aspects of the first movie: the eye-catching visualizations of Langdon's thought process. While the movie's immediacy may have played a part in its elimination, I thought this aspect was rather unique and mesmerizing, and it still could have been used nicely in this installment. To his credit, though, Howard does handle the movie's locations extremely well, especially considering all the important places that they didn't get access to and had to 'fake' (like St. Peter's Square). I think one of the major improvements of Demons is the handling of Robert Langdon himself. Unlike the first movie, Tom Hanks actually has some character material to work with this time, as he's confronted to explain his beliefs, and as he has to work through his already-strained relationship with the Catholic Church. (Part of this has to do with how writers Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp turned Angels into a Da Vinci sequel, even though Demons is the first book in the series.) Plus, Hanks isn't saddled with a mullet this time. :) Stepping into the leading lady role this time is Ayelet Zurer (best known as Eric Bana's wife in Munich), as a scientist working with antimatter at the Large Hadron Collider. Her role, while significant, isn't as major as Audrey Tautou's, especially since this movie actually separates Zurer and Hanks for a sizeable portion of screen time. As the acting head of state, Ewan McGregor gives a performance that's relatively engaging. However, I must say that the movie really starts falling apart during the action climax (involving a helicopter). Granted, it takes a lot of suspension of disbelief on my part to make it through both of these Robert Langdon movies, but during the climax, I found myself saying, "Yeah, right!" I don't want to spoil anything, but I assure you: you'll know it when you see it. All told, Angels & Demons pretty much takes the opposite approach of The Da Vinci Code, fixing some of the first movie's problems while introducing a set of its own that Code didn't have. If Howard eventually makes the third Robert Langdon movie, perhaps he'll take what worked from Da Vinci and what worked from Demons, and actually make an undeniably good movie out of those elements. But until then...

Star Rating: 3/5