Avoiding cardinal sins
Action sets Ron Howard’s ‘Angels & Demons’ apart from its successful but sometimes boring predecessor
By Lisa Miller 05/14/2009
Although it’s technically a prequel, having read “The Da Vinci Code” before “Angels & Demons” — which author Dan Brown actually wrote first — director Ron Howard chose to position “Angels” as a sequel.
If you’ll recall, Howard’s 2006 film adaptation of “The Da Vinci Code” proposed a biblical cover-up of the child resulting from Christ’s sexual union with his favorite apostle, Mary Magdalene. The movie grossed $750 million, but critical reaction rightly proclaimed the film leaden, arcane, confusing and overly talky. Much like the first “Harry Potter,” “The Da Vinci Code” demonstrated the folly of overly faithful film adaptations, leading producer Brian Grazer to once lament, “We were too reverential, which resulted in the film being a little long and stagey."
Although Sony in 2003 acquired the rights to both Brown’s works, the Writers Guild strike delayed production of the sequel. So having the extra time, Howard had screenwriter David Keep punch up “Angels” with more action — lots more action — and violence.
“Angels” suggests that Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is summoned to the Vatican after four cardinals are kidnapped by the Illuminati, an ancient secret society. The last pope has just died and a conclave is called to elect his successor. But now, not only will that gathering be four cardinals short; those four are also widely considered front-runners to win the papacy.
Aided by the Camerlengo, a Vatican overseer during the papal vacancy (Ewan McGregor), Langdon receives technical support from Italian Inspector Olivetti (Favino), then teams up with beautiful particle physicist Vittoria (Ayelet Zurer) to track down anti-matter stolen from CERN (Conseil Européen pour la Recherche Nucléaire, which runs European Laboratory for Particle Physics in Geneva) that the Illuminati claims it will use to blow the Vatican to smithereens.
A cryptic message informs Langdon that the Illuminati will execute one of the four cardinals each hour, then destroy the Vatican. To prevent this disaster, Langdon races from church to church, magically discerning which statues point toward clues and which are just pointing.
In assigning “Angels & Demons” a PG-13 rating, the MPAA cites a lack of nudity and foul language. Apparently, gouged-out eyeballs, grisly murders and close-ups of men on fire are not a problem for America’s guardians of good taste.
Considering the number of green-screens necessary to flesh out the film’s manufactured sets, “Angels” does a good job of creating the illusion that it was filmed on location, but Italian authorities hope filmmakers will address Brown’s incorrect placement of landmarks, because throngs of tourists make daily requests to visit them. In the filmmaker’s defense, however, clarifying the locations was made almost impossible by the Vatican’s steadfast refusal to grant Howard and crew access to its libraries and inner sanctums.
Over the span of a few weeks, Howard’s crew filmed as many exterior shots as possible, but they were compelled to use more fake locations than they’d hoped. The director was granted access to CERN, but no principal filming was done there, leaving a construction crew to build all the interiors and CERN’s particle accelerator, not to mention the Sistine Chapel, on Sony’s backlot.
Howard’s filming technique incorporates handheld cameras to shoot frequent walk-and-talks, livening up the expository dialogue. Whether this will avoid a repetition of “The Da Vinci Code’s” cardinal sin — boring audiences to death — remains to be seen.
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