Ron Howard’s Angels & Demons opens with a death and never slows down. Pope Pius XVI is gone. The cardinals gather to elect a successor. Four of them are taken before the voting starts. A canister of antimatter sits somewhere in Vatican City, set to destroy the place at midnight.
That is the machine of the thing, and it runs. Whether it runs anywhere worth going is another question, and the answer is mostly no.
Trailer, via Sony Pictures Entertainment.
Tom Hanks Returns as Robert Langdon
Tom Hanks returns as Robert Langdon, the Harvard symbologist who worked the Priory of Sion case in Paris and London. The Vatican wants him because of that experience. Claudio Vicenzi recruits him. The Illuminati, a secret underground organization, appears to be back after four cardinals are kidnapped on the night of the papal conclave.
Langdon’s theory is clean enough to hang a thriller on. The four murders will happen on the four altars of the “Path of Illumination,” each tied to a classical element. He gets access to the Vatican Secret Archive to research the altars. Commander Richter, head of the Swiss Guard, does not want him there.
That conflict is the best thing in the film. Richter is played by Stellan Skarsgård, and he gives the movie its only real friction. Langdon is a guest the Vatican tolerates and resents. Every scene in the archive or the square carries that tension.
Vittoria Vetra and the Antimatter Canister
Ayelet Zurer plays Dr. Vittoria Vetra, a CERN scientist who joins the search. At CERN, she and Fr. Silvano Bentivoglio built three antimatter canisters. She finds Bentivoglio murdered and one canister gone. That is the clock.
Vetra is the film’s second lead and its most underwritten. She confirms a suspicion about Pius XVI’s death — that his “stroke” was actually a tinzaparin overdose — by inspecting his body in the necropolis. That is a real plot turn, and Zurer plays it straight. But the movie keeps handing her clues instead of scenes.
The pair work well enough as a unit. They do not work as characters. Langdon explains; Vetra absorbs. That is the shape of nearly every exchange between them.
Four Altars on the Path of Illumination
The murders are the film’s engine, and they are staged as a countdown. One cardinal dies each hour, from 8 p.m. to midnight, when the antimatter explodes.
- Cardinal Ebner suffocates through a mouth full of dirt at the Chigi Chapel, branded “Earth.”
- Cardinal Lamassé’s lungs are punctured in St. Peter’s Square, branded “Air.”
- The altar of fire is Santa Maria della Vittoria.
Langdon and two Vatican City police officers race each site. They arrive late every time. That is the pattern, and it is meant to be. The film wants you to feel the clock, not the rescue.
It works about half the time. The Chigi Chapel sequence has a genuine chill. The Bernini statue clue that points Langdon to the next altar is a good piece of detective work, plainly staged. The film is at its best when it is just Langdon reading a room.
Ewan McGregor as the Camerlengo
Ewan McGregor plays Camerlengo Patrick McKenna, who runs the Vatican during the sede vacante. He is the film’s most interesting piece of casting, and its most wasted.
McKenna is a priest holding the whole institution together while it is under attack. McGregor plays him with a calm that reads as faith and, later, as something else. The film does not give him enough room to make the turn land. When the reveal comes, it is a plot beat, not a character one.
The supporting cast is deep and mostly decorative. Armin Mueller-Stahl as Cardinal Strauss. Pierfrancesco Favino as Inspector Olivetti. Nikolaj Lie Kaas as the assassin, who gets the film’s few moments of pure menace. Thure Lindhardt as Chartrand. Cosimo Fusco as Father Simeon. Victor Alfieri as Lieutenant Valenti. Franklin Amobi as Cardinal Lamasse. David Pasquesi as Claudio Vicenzi.
That is a lot of names for a film that gives most of them one job each.
Rome, Culver City and Hans Zimmer
Howard shoots Rome and Vatican City like a location, not a soundstage. Filming ran primarily between June and October 2008 in Rome and at Sony Pictures Studios in Culver City, California. You can feel the difference.
The Secret Archive, St. Peter’s Square, the necropolis — these are real spaces, and the film uses them. Hans Zimmer returns on score, and Brian Grazer returns as producer. Akiva Goldsman returns as screenwriter, with David Koepp coming on board to help.
The craft is not the problem. The film looks and sounds like a $150 million production, because it was one. The problem is what the money is spent on.
A Sequel That Beats The Da Vinci Code
Angels & Demons is a sequel to the 2006 film The Da Vinci Code, also directed by Howard. It is the second installment in the Robert Langdon film series. The novel version, Dan Brown’s 2000 book, was published before The Da Vinci Code novel, which makes the film order a reversal of the books.
That reversal matters less than it sounds. The film resets Langdon into a new conspiracy with a new clock. It does not ask you to remember much.
It premiered in Rome on May 4, 2009, and released on May 15 by Sony Pictures Releasing through its Columbia Pictures label. It grossed $485.9 million worldwide against a $150 million production budget, becoming the ninth highest-grossing film of 2009.
The reviews were mixed, and the consensus was that it improved on its predecessor. That is a low bar, and the film clears it. It is faster, less self-important, and less interested in lecturing you about art history. It is still a film about a man reading symbols aloud while time runs out.
The Numbers
- Runtime: 139 minutes
- Production budget: $150 million
- Worldwide gross: $485.9 million
- 2009 box office rank: ninth highest-grossing film
- Metacritic: 48/100
- Our score: 4.8/10
What the Clock Cannot Fix
The countdown structure is the film’s best decision. Four murders, four elements, four altars, one bomb. It gives every scene a destination and every destination a deadline.
The antimatter is the weakest link in that chain. It is a device, not a threat. The film never makes you feel the city at risk, only the clock. A bomb that destroys Vatican City should be terrifying. Here it is a timer with a nice visual.
The Illuminati are the other hollow piece. The film treats them as a brand — a symbol to decode, not a belief to understand. Langdon’s expertise is the whole appeal, and the film keeps reducing it to pointing at things.
Angels & Demons is a competent thriller with a good clock and no pulse. It is better than The Da Vinci Code in the ways that matter least — pacing, tone, restraint — and no better in the ways that matter most. It has no idea what it is about.
The cast is the reason to watch it, and the cast is the reason it disappoints. Hanks is comfortable. Skarsgård is sharp. McGregor is doing something the script does not support. Zurer is given a scientist’s credentials and a sidekick’s lines.
Howard can stage a chase. He cannot stage a crisis of faith, and this film keeps reaching for one. The Camerlengo’s arc should be the spine of the movie. It is a twist instead.
A sequel, Inferno, concluded the series in 2016. That is the honest shape of this franchise: three films, one formula, diminishing returns.
Angels & Demons is worth one watch for the Rome footage and the countdown. It is not worth a second for anything else.
4.8 of 10.
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