Film review: ‘Angels & Demons,’ 2½ stars - Entertainment, Movies - Army Times

Film review: ‘Angels & Demons,’ 2½ stars

Many people like parsing clues to solve puzzles and riddles. But few would call it a particularly action-packed pastime.

This is largely what hobbled the film adaptation of Dan Brown’s blockbuster novel “The DaVinci Code” — as well as its less sluggish but still problematic follow-up, “Angels & Demons.”

This one benefits greatly from location scenes featuring the most famous and impressive landmarks of Rome and Vatican City and a premise about the very survival of the Catholic Church that is sufficiently grandiose to hold interest.

But while director Ron Howard and writer Akiva Goldsman (with co-writer David Koepp) work hard to create a sense of tension and action, the puzzle-piece framework of both films strains their efforts to the limit.

In “Angels & Demons,” Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) must suss out a series of cryptic clues in a race against time to rescue four kidnapped senior cardinals being held in different parts of Rome.

Langdon delivers long-winded exposition while figuring out the first location, and then he and the authorities go tearing off through the streets, tunnels, catacombs and crypts of Rome, filmed in herky-jerky fashion and backed by bombastic soundtrack music.

Invariably, they arrive too late. Langdon then serves up more windy exposition while figuring out the second location. And the posse zooms off once again.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

The four missing cardinals are prime candidates to replace a “progressive and beloved” pope who has just passed on.

Langdon is brought in to assist Inspector Olivetti (Pierfrancesco Favino) of the Italian police; dour Commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgard), head of the pantalooned Swiss Guard, the Vatican security force; and young Camerlengo Patrick (Ewan McGregor), an Irish orphan raised by the late Holy Father who holds transitional power until a new pope is elected.

Also on hand is sultry Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), in the mix because the kidnapper has planted an antimatter time bomb stolen from Vetra’s lab in Switzerland — enough to blow Vatican City and a good chunk of Rome literally to Kingdom Come.

The clues Langdon repeatedly pulls out of thin air point to the Illuminati, an order of progressive thinkers that championed scientific truth over religious faith until the Church brutally repressed and drove it underground in the 17th century.

Not only has the order apparently returned, but it also may have slipped one or more agents into the Vatican hierarchy.

The film is never unwatchable, but neither is it emotionally gripping, mainly because there’s no one really worth rooting for.

Langdon is possibly the thinnest role Hanks has ever taken — a ventriloquist’s dummy for the torrent of historical background that is as tedious as it is unavoidable if viewers are to keep a grip on what’s happening.

This shallowness is underscored by another odd note: the passive-aggressive absence of any hint of sexual tension — or even flirty banter — between Langdon and Vetra. It’s weirdly distracting; you can’t help wondering why the sidekick was drawn as a beautiful woman in the first place.

For all its flaws, the film does deserve props for its final 15 minutes, featuring a spectacular “ascension and descension” metaphor that is as subtle as a brick to the head, followed by a wowser twist ending.

But at a too-long 140 minutes, “Angels & Demons” leaves the lingering impression of being both overcooked and underdone.

Not that any of this will keep it from raking in an ungodly box-office haul, mind you.

Rated PG-13 for violence and disturbing images. Got a rant or rave about the movies? E-mail cvinch@atpco.com.