ANGELS & DEMONS Blu-Ray (Columbia/Imagine 2009) Sony Home Entertainment

A follow up - cinematically at least - to The Da Vinci Code (2006), Ron Howard's Angels & Demons (2009) fares slightly better than its predecessor - the former, debuting as something of a convoluted mess that, arguably, remained faithful to Dan Brown's novel from which its inspiration derived, yet problematically so, and, seeming to randomly omit vast passages of vital information necessary to transform the story into a coherent cinematic experience for anyone who never read the books. On this outing, the screenplay by David Koepps and Akiva Goldman strictly adheres to Brown's book - a plus in many ways, though nevertheless to slow down the narrative – in several scenes – to bring everything to a screeching halt.  It should be pointed out, chronologically, Angels & Demons - the novel – precedes the events of The Da Vinci Code while in this movie franchise, Koepps and Goldman have done the chronological reverse. Tom Hanks reprises his role as symbologist, Robert Langdon, a Harvard professor, summoned to Rome by Dr. Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) after someone has stolen dangerous antimatter from the European Organization's nuclear research laboratories and murdered Vetra's coworker, Father Silvano Bentrivoglio. As a psychological thriller, Angels & Demons is a bit of a wash – Hanks, playing the bloodless intellectual who has about as much animated appeal as a stick of brittle kindling, painfully in search of the slow burn. At just under 2 ½ hrs., Howard’s bleak investigation of the Catholic church is more of a slog than sinister, much too long, self-involved, agonizingly exaggerated and dreadfully run-of-the-mill.

I suspect subtlety here to be lost on Ron Howard – a film-maker, whom I otherwise greatly esteem – but who, herein has simply forgotten what made Brown’s stories ‘book of the month club’ pulp fiction-pleasers, is, precisely what derails their pleasure in not altogether surviving the translation to the big screen; Brown's pulpy nonsense mashed together as a time-honored love/hate relationship between the devout sages of religion and the denizens of science. Trading philosophical debate for endlessly dull monologues is, I suspect, meant to augment the hair-raising paralysis in all this rough pantomime to terrific and sobering heights.  What the picture lacks, however, is narrative urgency. Hell, even a spark of creative genius - now and then - would be preferred to all the dead clergy and slinky scientists who populate and push up the daisies. The Koepps/Goldman screenplay drags every last morsel of suspense through the mire of some misguidedly prolonged manifest destiny scenario for all mankind, one wrong turn, since to have doomed it to extinction. Our story begins in Rome, the Vatican mourning the death of Pope Pius XVI. However, while preparing the papal conclave to elect the next Pontiff, four of its leading incumbents are kidnapped and held hostage by the Illuminati - a resurrected secret society who threaten to kill not only the papal incumbents one by one, but also millions attending Vatican City, by detonating the antimatter in the public square.

Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) assumes temporary control over the Vatican's precious treasures, allowing Robert and Vittoria unprecedented access to the hidden archives in the hopes of discovering the whereabouts of the kidnapped priests. Meanwhile, Robert and Vittoria are challenged to uncover the mystery behind the four altars of the Paths of Illumination before it is too late. Help arrives from Inspector General Ernesto Olivetti (Pierfrancesco Favino) and Lieutenant Valenti (Victor Alfieri), but the true path to understanding is repeatedly barred by some unforeseen force, very close to the heart of the Vatican. Essentially, the rest of Angels & Demons digresses in true Hollywood style to a race against time with Robert and Vittoria working together to solve the crime, rescue the priests, diffuse the antimatter and learn the true identity of the leader of the Illuminati. What is particularly disheartening is the heavy-handed use of the hand-held camera, ineffectively reducing virtually every chase sequence into a frenetic mess of equilibrium-destabilizing junk shots, creating more motion sickness than suspense in the mind and stomach of the viewer.

I will digress a moment here to make my public inquiry to Hollywood en masse, to propose the question - "What has happened to the concept of setting up a shot, establishing tension through skillful editing, instead of a perpetually mobile trucking through the action, thrusting a multitude of discombobulated images together in the hopes that the viewer will be able to decipher what they are seeing?" This is not ‘clever’ picture-making, folks; nor is it how movies should be experienced. When the camera momentarily pauses, just long enough for the audience to catch its collective breath, we can almost appreciate Hanks’ acting chops. He is capable of sustaining our interest without the trickery of Ginsu-ing his performance through a series of pointless and idiotic rapid pans, zooms, cutaways and sloppy editing. Alas, the camera rarely pauses. Nor does it allow the viewer to absorb some of the truly astounding location work done in Rome. In the final analysis, Angels & Demons is less than compelling entertainment – made even more disposable and ugly by the ‘artistic’ methods by which Howard has brought its feeble tale to life.

Sony Home Entertainment's Blu-Ray disc exhibits a very dark, razor-sharp image. Intermittently pausing throughout affords us the opportunity to see just how much fine detail is evident in the image; though again, viewing at the regular speed generally obscures Salvatore Totino’s cinematography into a blurry mess. You might as well close your eyes for all that it matters. Contrast is excellent and, for a movie as dark as this, there is – remarkably – no black crush. Sony’s 5.1 Dolby Digital mix is very solid, affording Hans Zimmer’s score its due. Dialogue is crisp and refined. SFX are well placed. Extras include 7 brief featurettes covering the production from virtually every aspect. The Blu-Ray contains both the original ‘theatrical’ and ‘extended cut’. There is also a rather neat 'follow Langdon's journey' interactive feature that – true confession – I found more fascinating than the movie.  Bottom line: Angels & Demons is not a good movie. It’s a snore.

FILM RATING (out of 5 - 5 being the best)

3.5

VIDEO/AUDIO

4

EXTRAS

4