Tom Hanks & Ewan McGregor in the movie Angels & Demons. Movie Review & Trailer

What do you remember about the film version of "The Da Vinci Code," exactly?

I remember two things. One is Jean Reno's surprising show of feeling when his character, the weaselly French police inspector, learned he had been betrayed. For a brief, shining moment all the plot mechanics mattered in human terms.

The other is the grim, tight-lipped face of Tom Hanks, a very fine actor and a bona fide movie star, struggling to humanize the role of Harvard symbologist and eternal gasbag Robert Langdon, as he cracked the riddle of the great-great-great-greatgreatgreat-granddaughter begotten by Christianity's favorite son.

Some secrets are destined to find the light. The origins of the professor's academia-mullet "Da Vinci Code" haircut, meanwhile, remain a mystery.

That haircut is gone in "Angels & Demons," director Ron Howard's second film adaptation of a Dan Brown best seller, but three years later the major players are back for more grandiloquent hackery.

Hanks returns to the dullest role of his career, under the direction of Howard, who takes the material as seriously as a kidney stone on the way out.

Cinematographer Salvatore Totino again adds heaps of holy light and unholy shadow. Composer Hans Zimmer fulminates like a maniac, whipping up music that would be considered too much for "The Omen" and "Armageddon" put together.

The frenzied choirs wail, the kettle drums pound, and the skulkers and schemers lurk in the Vatican awaiting selection of a new pope.

Members of the secret Illuminati brotherhood have stolen a canister of explosive antimatter from a Geneva particle physics facility, leaving a murdered scientist behind. Somewhere in Vatican City, four cardinals have been kidnapped, and they're to be killed, one per hour. The antimatter's scheduled to go blooey all over Vatican City, thus representing a triumph of Illuminati over the Catholics (old grudge match there; long story), and Langdon must locate the secret Path of Illumination and protect the lives of millions.

"Da Vinci" was a $758 million global hit. I have yet to run into anyone who really liked it.

How could the follow-up be the same sort of lumbering mediocrity? These people are professionals!

Astonishingly, "Angels & Demons" is the same sort of lumbering mediocrity. It's more violent than "Da Vinci," which is something, I guess, and its narrative structure ensures a regular string of cliffhangers. But what turns the pages in print (or on a Kindle) doesn't necessarily propel a story onscreen.

Once again Hanks has nothing to play except generic concern, as he and his latest comely but sexual-tension-free partner in sleuthing (an Italian particle physicist played by Ayelet Zurer) run around Rome hunting for bloodthirsty members of the Illuminati.

Nobody goes to movies like this for the dialogue, but still: "It's a passageway that leads to the Vatican!" Then, bam! Langdon enters a new church, and again stops dead for more background on whatever the hell is helping him play this game of "Where's Cardinal?"

Hanks does what he can to add a little spice to lines such as "The chapel is Raphael ... but the statues are Bernini."

But Howard is no help. He goes at "Angels & Demons" impersonally, which is depressing, because in his better movies -- "Apollo 13" or " Frost/Nixon" -- he knows his populism and sells it, respectably.

The cast cannot be faulted, even if Hanks seems at odds with such a robotically functional leading role. The supporting ranks include Ewan McGregor as the late pontiff's favorite acolyte, Stellan Skarsgard as the seething Swiss Guard security chief and Armin Mueller-Stahl, who plays a cardinal right down the middle, so that we wonder if he's a good cardinal or a bad cardinal.

Even so, watching "Angels & Demons" was like being waterboarded by exposition.

At one point Hanks can be glimpsed gasping for air, mid-endless-sentence. Has there ever been a flatter movie character played by a more innately likable star?

Angels & Demons MPAA rating: PG-13 (for sequences of violence, disturbing images and thematic material).

Running time: 2:15.

Starring:

Tom Hanks (Robert Langdon); Ewan McGregor (Camerlengo); Ayelet Zurer (Vittoria Vetra); Stellan Skarsgard (Commander Richter); Pierfrancesco Favino (Inspector Olivetti); Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Assassin); Armin Mueller-Stahl (Cardinal Strauss).

Directed by Ron Howard;

Written by David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman, based on the novel by Dan Brown;

Produced by Brian Grazer, Howard and John Calley.

A Columbia Pictures release.

 

Angels & Demons Movie Review - Tom Hanks & Ewan McGregor

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