Review - Angels and Demons (SPOILERS) | ryuuzaki's Blog

As always, this review contains massive SPOILERS, as well as my opinions regarding key scenes from the movie, so you may want to stop reading now if you're thinking of seeing the movie and want everything to be a nice surprise.

I also wish to take this moment to say that I have never read any of Dan Brown's books (yeah, not even The DaVinci Code) and so this review has no bearing on the quality of the novel on which this film is based.

Without further ado, here's my thoughts on Angels and Demons:

The movie is a sequel to The DaVinci Code, but the two movies don't really tie together in any way...

Angels and Demons begins with somebody breaking into CERN and stealing a container of anti-matter that had just been created in the LHC.  The movie then cuts to an agent of the Vatican contacting Robert Langdon - a symbologist from Harvard University - as they found evidence that the Illuminati were involved in the theft.

Meanwhile, in the Vatican City, the Pope has died and so all of the Cardinals are preparing to vote in the next one.  However, the four Preferiti have been kidnapped by an unknown man.  The Swiss Guard receive video proof of them, along with a strange message that claims that each of them will be branded and sacrificed on each hour up until midnight at the four elemental altars of the Illuminati.  Finally, at midnight, the kidnapper will detonate the anti-matter and destroy the entire Vatican City in a bolt of light.

Yeah...It's pretty complicated...

Anyway, they need Langdon to use his knowledge of secret societies to follow clues hidden within the work of Galileo to find out where these four elemental altars are before the Preferiti are murdered.  He also is teamed up with a few members of the Swiss Guard and a young woman from CERN named Vittoria Vetra who knows how to stop the anti-matter from detonating.

That's about all you really need to know to get a good feel of the plot.  Like I said, it's fairly complicated and flies at you alarmingly fast.  A good background knowledge of quantum physics and how papal elections work seems to be essential to fully appreciating this film.  Even without this, though, the film is action-packed and enthralling.  I would definitely say that it's better than the adaptation of The DaVinci Code.

It does have some nagging annoyances in the plot department, however, that I feel like I should mention.

The idea of 'election by acclamation' really annoys me, but it turns out that it really does exist so I'll just shut my mouth on that point.  However, the Camerlengo's plan just seems to be a little bit weird.  Okay, so he's planned to murder the existing Pope and plant a bomb that he will eventually save the Vatican City from, thus causing the Cardinals to elect him to become the next Pope.  There are far too many variables here that could go wrong.  How does he know that the Cardinals will perform this 'election by acclamation' thing?  How does he know that the heroes will stumble upon the bomb and allow him to save the day?  Isn't it fairly lucky that there's a helicopter right outside the door of the Sistine Chapel just when he needs it?  If the head of the Swiss Guard really suspected him of murdering the Pope, why did he keep it a secret?  None of this seems to really make sense.  We just have to accept the fact that the Camerlengo is the luckiest villain on the planet...

Also, it really seems to be a long-shot that Langdon figures out some of these so-called "clues" to each of the elemental altars.  For example, the fire element.  The clue is that it's the location of the statue called 'The Ecstasy of Saint Teresa' (though I'm not quite sure why).  The statue contains one of the Seraphim (which apparently means something like 'fiery one').  Also, apparently Ecstasy = Passion = Hotness = Fire.  Yeah...that's somewhat of a long shot, I'm afraid.  Of all the statues in Rome, I find it unlikely that someone would stumble across this within 30 minutes of research...

Also, why is 'Pope' an element?  The five elemental brands of the Illuminati seem to be Earth, Wind, Fire, Water and Pope.  Why Pope?   I thought that most people believed the fifth element to be ether or (in the case of The Fifth Element Film and Captain Planet and the Planteers) love.  Why is Pope even an element?  Weren't the Illuminati supposed to be great intellectuals and scientists?

I wouldn't say that Angels and Demons is a ground-breaking movie as it seems to be fairly daft and even plot-holey in places, but I did enjoy watching it.  It certainly kept me entertained for two and a half hours, so it's probably worth seeing it once.  At the moment though, I would say that going to watch Star Trek would be a far better use of your time.