by Jay Bamber

Created on: July 11, 2009

The death of a progressive Pope has left the Vatican and members of the Catholic Church in a state of complete mourning; however, when the four potential replacements for the papacy are kidnapped and publically threatened with execution Professor Robert Langdon is called to unravel the mysteries surrounding the group accused of this conspiracy, The Illuminati. With time ticking and the fresh threat of annihilation to the Vatican he must work alongside Vittoria, a beautiful physicist, and Camerlengo, charged to protect the Catholic church, to unravel a web of lies and revenge.

Angels and Demons is a fairly pacey, mysterious and interesting thriller which outsmarts its predecessor in almost every way; it is more engaging, more convincing and builds to a more satisfying finale. However, it is still haunted by the constant and overpowering sense of ridiculousness which haunted The Da Vinci Code and is often wildly and hilariously overblown. It lacks any sense of shape, seemingly happy to float around, never really knowing what it wants to be or what it wants to audience to feel; Howard fails to give the material any semblance of direction or purpose. It juxtaposes quiet, dull postulating with relentless and frantic action which makes the whole piece feel uneven and it goes for cheap, easy thrills when well planned and intelligent plot twists would have been so much better. The audience is given no reason to care about the characters or the situations in which they find themselves; the film fails to include one poignant moment and it fails to get any kind of emotional response from the audience. The whole thing feels tired and shabby and it outstays its welcome far before the bloated running time comes to an end. Angels and Demons never really gathers any momentum, despite a few genuinely thrilling and intense sequences as well as the best efforts of McGregor and Hanks, limping along until it gets a bit of energy in the final act. Beneath the ludicrous set pieces and implausible narrative turns there are some truly interesting ideas and a decent story, but the screenplay insists on removing the source novel's most compelling elements and dwelling on its least.

The main problem with Angels and Demons is the cast and crew's insistence on making everything so overblown; almost every scene is over-the-top and it quickly becomes humorous in its unsuccessful attempts at building tension. Every second is imbued with a jarring sense of urgency which never allows

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