Action, Light, Sound & Mumbled dialogs. Review on Angels & Demons Movie

Introduction

Though Da Vinci Code is Dan Brown’s most popular book, my personal favorite isAngels & Demons. I was disappointed with the movie version of Da Vinci Code, and was hoping that the team would have learnt from the mistakes when they announced the movie based on Angels & Demons.

The Plot

The Pope of the Vatican has died and a new Pope has to be elected. The cardinals from all over the world come over for the voting of the new Pope. But, they discover that four of the Preferiti are missing and a mysterious video message indicates that the abductor intends to kill them every hour.

Around the same time, Professor Vetra who was working on “Anti-Matter” research is found murdered in his own laboratory. The unstable “Anti-Matter” is found missing and the danger that it exposes the Vatican to gets the Vatican police moving. They bring in renowned symbologist, Robert Langdon(Tom Hanks), who joins forces with Vetra’s daughter Vittoria(Ayelet Zurer) to search for the missing Preferiti.

Meanwhile, Carmelengo Patrick McKenna(Ewan McGregor) extends all possible support to Langdon and Vittoria in their search of the Preferiti. Check out the movie to find out whether they succeed or not.

Critic’s Viewpoint

As I already mentioned above, I was disappointed with movie based on Da Vinci Code.There were two primary reasons for that, one was the movie seemed to move ever so slowly and secondly, the actors seemed to be mumbling their dialogs rather than saying it properly.

Ron Howard seems to have partly learnt from that experience and the action in Angels & Demons is non-stop and keeps you on the edge of the seats. Part of that might be that the clues in this movie are much easier to depict via picture than in Da Vinci Code and hence less dialog oriented in that sense. The church visuals were good and some scenes especially the pre-climax scene of the Anti-Matter burst and the parachute bailout was pretty well done. I was though disappointed at the depiction of the 3 murders, it did not create the same aura as the book intends.

Tom Hanks seems to have got a better hang of the role of Robert Langdon in this movie and gives a much better performance than in Da Vinci Code. But I am still disappointed with people mumbling their dialogs in barely audible voices. If those dialogs are not meant to be heard, let’s have a silent movie rather than guessing what lip movements are for!

Ewan McGregor’s strength is his face which depicts a wide range of emotions and he has again used that strength well in this movie. Unfortunately, at times he also mumbles his dialogs in this movie; otherwise it was definitely one of the better performances in the movie. The rest of the crew has done a decent job.

I loved the overall sound effects of the movie i.e. the background score and it seemed to have a soothing effect over the whole movie, though the screeching car every time a clue is cracked was over done.

Summary

All in all this movie is a much better effort than Da Vinci Code. The movie brings the book to life in many aspects, but there is still scope for improvement.

I would give this movie a 4 star rating.