Angels & Demons is an adaptation of the best selling Dan Brown novel of the same name and reunites director Ron Howard and actor Tom Hanks for their fourth collaboration. Even though Angels is theatrically a sequel to The Da Vinci Code, the novel was published years before Code, which meant Howard, Hanks, and Brown had to play the film as a sequel rather than a prequel, which created an interesting challenge for all involved.
During the testing of the Large Hadron Collider, a small amount of anti-matter is created and separated in three canisters for testing. At the same time the Catholic Church is in the middle of both mourning the passing of the Pope and trying to choose his successor. The secret society known as The Illuminati is trying to disrupt the Vatican’s search for a new pope. To accomplish this, they not only kidnap the top four candidates, but steal one of the anti-matter canisters with the intention of destroying the Vatican. To carry out this threat, The Illuminati has an assassin who will kill each of the candidates at key spots — one per hour until midnight when they’ll expose the anti-matter to matter which would cause a devastating explosion.
The Illuminati leave ancient symbols in their notes, but it’s beyond the Church’s comprehension, so they reluctantly reach out to symbolist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) who’s been at odds with the Church for years over books he’s written. However the Church knows that Langdon is their best shot at finding the missing cardinals and preventing the explosion of the canister.
Langdon must solve the puzzles in order to deduce where the cardinals are and stop the canister from exploding. To help him there’s Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) who becomes Langdon’s sidekick and assists him in solving the puzzles and locating the cardinals. He also has help from a surprising source — interim Pope Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) who wants to end the Illuminati threat and gives Langdon access to documents that Langdon has been petitioning the Church for years to allow him access to. While his skills as a symbolist help him solve the puzzles, Langdon’s life is in constant danger as Illuminati agents are trying to prevent him from doing so and will do what it takes to stop him.
The movie is very much an action/thriller, and Hanks is great once again as Langdon who doesn’t take sides in religion versus science — he just wants the truth. However when looking for the truth, what you find isn’t always pretty. McGregor turns in a great performance as a member of the clergy who isn’t exactly what he seems and may have his own agenda as to who becomes the next pope.
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