Tom Hanks reprises his role as Robert Langdon in Angels and Demons, prequel (now rewritten as a sequel for the film) to The Da Vinci Code. Angels and Demons is based on a best-selling mystery-thriller novel written by American author Dan Brown and published by Pocket Books in 2000. It revolves around fictional Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon’s challenge to reveal the mysteries of a secret society called the Illuminati and to foil a plot to destroy the Church by use of antimatter or the “god particle.”
While The Da Vinci Code, in book and film forms, entertained in a bookish sort of way, Angels and Demons adds skin, jaw-dropping action and gore, appealing to a broader audience. It opens with what I assume is Hank’s body-double taking a swim in a tight Speedo, then bombards viewers with a violent sequence of events involving mutilation by branding, burning, gun-fire, explosions, and so on.
Angels and Demons surprises with special effects you might expect to see in J.J. Abrams Star Trek, culminating in an eye-popping interpretation of what one might expect uncontrolled antimatter to do when set free. And despite the usage of replicas and green screens (The Vatican prevented filming inside Church structures), one feels like she’s actually getting a peek into the Vatican’s secret lairs.
As for casting, Ayelet Zurer plays a convincing physicist. Sharp and not easily shaken. Fans of the Da Vinci Code may have expected to see Audrey Tautou’s vulnerability in Zurer, but Zurer makes her role as strong and feminine female lead stand out in the film. Also noteworthy is the casting of Stellan Skarsgård as flinty Commander Richter and Ewan McGregor as the cherub-faced priest, the Camerlengo Patrick McKenna. Both sell their characters, and in doing so, make the plot twists surprising and believable.
Angels and Demons delivers as a classic tale of the eternal struggle between modernity and antiquity, science and religion, the establishment and the people, good and evil. It’s not a dark and gritty action drama that wrestles with these concepts in a profound way. Nevertheless, it poses interesting questions about whether these forces are truly opposites and whether reframing the debate is in order. On this level, Angels and Demons fits nicely as a bridge between Star Trek and Terminator: Salvation.