The Da Vinci Code is easily one of the worst movies made in the last five years. Everything that could possibly be done well in a movie - writing, acting, directing - was done poorly in The Da Vinci Code. The idea that men that are as smart and talented as Tom Hanks and director Ron Howard would want to make a movie even tangentially related to it is an insult to both of their careers and to cinema. However, the popularity of the film and the Robert Langdon books by Dan Brown made the sequel Angels & Demons inevitable.
Unlike the book, Angels & Demons is set after the events of The Da Vinci Code. Hanks' Robert Langdon is called in by the Vatican to help find four cardinals who are in the running to secede the recently deceased pope. Their captors appear to be the Illuminati, a secret society of scientists that was once driven underground by the Catholic church. Now, they are planning their revenge by executing the cardinals and then destroying the Vatican using an antimatter bomb. Langdon's expertise in symbology is used to help crack the code of the Illuminati and find the cardinals before it is too late.
With a story that actually has something at stake, Angels & Demons is immediately better than the previous film. While Howard found himself unable to direct the albino monk-based action of The Da Vinci Code, he is surprisingly able to wring a significant amount of suspense from the preposterous idea of an antimatter bomb - made from the God particle - buried somewhere in the Vatican.
The biggest problem with both films is Langdon himself. He's an inactive character throughout most of the film. His main responsibility seems to be to dish out long passages of boring exposition while others handle the action. When the movie finally gets to a point where he has to read old texts - his supposed job - his inability to read foreign languages makes you wonder how he became so renowned in his field. Hanks is unable to elevate the material simply because there is very little material to elevate.
However, the movie is not a complete waste of time, like The Da Vinci Code. The plot may be ridiculous and formulaic, but at least it's not insulting and boring. However, one still wishes that Hanks, Howard and the rest of the talented cast and crew involved in these films would find something better to do.
3 Culture
Ethan Goldsmith
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