Okay, a confession before I start off today’s romp, folks–I never got around to seeing The Da Vinci Code. Frankly, I never had a huge interest in doing so–from what I DID see of it, mostly some trailers and bits on the news and such, it looked spectacularly dull. Tom Hanks running around solving puzzles while being chased by a psychopathic albino? Great…sounds like Myst, only I don’t get to play.
Though I had to admit, Angels And Demons, the sequel to The Da Vinci Code (which was technically first in the series of books) looked a lot more exciting than its predecessor. And indeed, it performed as advertised.
Professor Robert Langdon, played once again by Tom Hanks, has been called to Rome following a bizarre death threat–someone’s going to start killing cardinals in the wake of the recent death of the sitting Pope. And in a bid to stop it, Langdon’s going to have to unravel a mystery that’s now several thousand years old–who are the Illuminati, and where did they keep their churches? Along the way, he’ll run afoul of intrigue both within and without the Vatican, and no one is anywhere near as trustworthy as you’d hope men who purport to be of God would be.
There’s one further complication: the entirety of Vatican City is under the threat of annihiliation by, get this, a CHUNK OF ANTIMATTER created by the Large Hadron Collider. And, as everybody who’s seen an episode of Star Trek in the last thirty years probably knows, when antimatter comes into contact with REGULAR matter, it goes plooie. A LOT.
Everyone was afraid these guys were going to rip open a black hole right in the middle of Europe, but no one really saw THIS coming.
Anyway, like I said, I really never got to see The Da Vinci Code, and frankly, that’s a good thing because Angels and Demons really doesn’t depend on the first story much at all. Oh, sure, there’ll be some bad blood between Langdon and the Vatican, but it’ll be only mentioned in passing before the whole thing is swept under the rug while they try to keep themselves from not dying in a massive fiery explosion. And indeed, as thrillers go, this sucker is a beauty. Some scenes are sufficiently gruesome to elevate them to horror status, and there will be plenty of twists, turns, and second-guesses to keep everybody well in suspense until the very end, and chances are, no one will really see the end coming unless they’ve read the book, which again, I have not.
It’s a beautiful movie, with lots of great sights to see and lots of wild action going on all around. There was one strange moment where the audio sounded a bit off, while Langdon’s in a spiral staircase, but your mileage may vary on that and chances are you’ll barely notice.
The way they’ve set this up is especially worthy of mention, as it’s basically set on a series of timed events–a new cardinal is going to get killed in a new and surprisingly messy fashion once an hour, every hour, until Vatican City goes up in a fire of antimatter. This ensures that there will be very few moments for the audience to catch its breath and for Langdon to demonstrate his mastery of thoroughly useless information (except of course in situations like this exact one) long enough to figure out where to go next.
One thing is perfectly clear, however: Angels and Demons is a thriller par excellence, and if you’re even vaguely into this kind of jacked-up mystery movie, then there’s no doubt that you need to get out and see this one. Like today, if you can.
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Seeing as how the first movie redefined the Biblical story of Jesus, it comes as no surprise that the Vatican has prevented the Angels & Demons team from shooting in Roman churches. This was confirmed by a Vatican official, who said that sequel is "incompatible with [their] religious sentiment."