Buy Angels & Demons (Blu-Ray) from Play.com

Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor

I admit i have been a little bit of a slow starter with the phenomenon of the Dan Brown novels. I knew the Da Vinci code paperback was a massive success and the popularity of the angels and demon book reviews hyped me up a lot into wanting to see these 2 film versions.

Having never read the davinci code book and not really knowing much about it i watched the film expecting it to be pretty lame and i’m happy to say i was wrong. So when Angels & Demons was released on DVD i was very keen to check it out.

I’m not a great lover of Tom Hanks films, not since the days of ‘Big’ and ‘The Burbs’ has he been at his best in my opinion. In this film, as with the previous, he plays Robert Langdon an investigative author. The story is based around the Catholic Church in Vatican City. The pope dies and a mysterious note is discovered that claims to be from the Illuminati, the churches oldest enemy. The note says they have kidnapped the main four candidates that are set to become the next pope and will execute them every hour.

In the meantime, A theft takes place at the underground facility where the Hadron Collider is being tested and they steal something known as anti-matter. No surprises its the same people who are responsible for the kidnappings. The church calls on the services of Robert Langdon to decode the note and trace the steps to foil the plot before Vatican City is destroyed.

Now… don’t get me wrong the story is great but this sloppy film is delivered poorly. Ewan McGregor plays Camerlengo Patrick McKenna and he is dreadful. Seriously poor. There are so many flaws in the plot and things don’t really seem to add up. I’m not trying to discredit Dan Brown as an author as i’m sure the books stand up. Ron Howard needs to do a hell of a lot better. I really wanted this film to work as it was a very interesting topic but it let me down.

Its not the wisest of my DVD purchases… but certainly not the worst. Dan Browns new novel ‘The Lost Symbol’ is out now and i have no doubt that it will also be made into a film version.

Director: Ron Howard
Writer: David Koepp, Akiva Goldsman