There’s a hell lot of bucks that can be made through blasphemy. Angels and Demons, the sequel by the opportunists who created The Da Vinci Code, is a fictitious take on the Illuminati. This sixteenth-century secret sect places a canister of antimatter particles in the papacy and threatens to eliminate the four major contenders to the papal throne. The Vatican hurriedly summons Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) to decipher ancient clues and the criminals’ plans.
One is supposed to believe that scientists are extroverts with boundless physical energy who think and act like highly trained sleuths. The appointed superman and a bundle-of-excited-nerves “research scientist”, who has possibly seen very little of the world outside her lab, have time till just after dusk of the same day to both solve the mystery and prevent “a cataclysmic event at midnight”. Will the duo succeed, or not? Take a single guess.
The frivolous content and the style of execution put this film in the same league as the mass entertainers that have a family and/or children as the central characters.
So, why are there no child actors, you may ask. And why does this film have such a somber tone? Simple. The filmmaker wants his audience to believe that there might be some truth in all this rubbish. That is also the reason why nobody cracks silly jokes, or laughs; the actors are tensed and grave, and throw rocket science dialogues; and the lead is played by a great actor known for usually donning serious roles.
The sacred sanctum of the papacy is cloaked in centuries of secrecy, perhaps very little of which has been exposed to the public; and what it preaches to its people may not have too much in common with what really goes on within its closets. As long as this is true, speculation will be rife, and there will be some who wish to profit from it.
Ron Howard’s cheap thriller may not have the depth of hell, but it has a diabolic odor. The phony “scientific” characters, ominous music, and provoking images such as that of cigarette-smoking cardinals, add sufficient fire to scorch the fanatics of the novel. However, this time, the queues were much shorter (though still significant) for two primary reasons: the novelty had somewhat worn off, and there wasn’t a Catholic Church ban to create an abyss of hype around this piece of rot.
