(Crown) Road to Perdition (Angels and Demons (DVD))

Member Name: thedevilinme

Product:	Angels and Demons (DVD)
Date:	11/10/09 (60 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Fun romp

Disadvantages: Bad casting

This time last year they were firing up the Large Hadron Collider deep under Switzerland in the vast CERN facility, the newspapers pumping the Armageddon story that if the wrong two particles were flung into each other it would trigger a cataclysmic chain reaction and the world would be sucked into a black hole. Accelerated hype this year was the announcement that an Al-Quieda suspect has been working at the secure secret nuclear plant.

The extremely expensive experiment is about discovering new particles by banging the ones we know about into each other to produce ones we don't know about, closing the gap in our scientific knowledge on how exactly the universe was created and how the "Big Bang" was fired up in the first place, the discovery of the so-called 'God Particle', also known as the 'Higgs-Boson', the theory. Sadly the machine never really got up to speed and then broke down completely, why I presume we are still here today.

A year on and the LHC is still not working and very broke, that scenario certainly not the case for Dan Brown who is absolutely rolling in work and cash after the success of the DaVinci Code and now Angels & Demons, the Collider featuring heavily in the latter movie, hence the intro, this the second of the Robert Langdon trilogy, even though in the book sequence this came before the DaVinci Code.

Browns narrative is all about that search for the ultimate particle and how the Catholic Church has always tried to defend their increasingly absurd version of events on 'creation' against science as the gap closes between scientific fact and prescribed religions. And the nearer we get to knowing the ultimate truth the more scared we get as the less sophisticated of us out there fall back into to anarchistic religious practices like 'creationalism' in case the result is that we are indeed all alone in the darkness due to random events and so no creator and so any meaning to life, all alone and drifting into dust. That physics lab called the 'universe', of course, is big enough to produce that random occurrence called earth by chance alone, something the major religions of the world now know through that very science but having trouble letting go of their power in spite of that revelation. Man probably did create the Gods we know but religion hits back wit the fact our DNA outdates planet Earth, meaning something was here before the Big Bang.

Einstein had another angle on events. Although a devout Jew the brilliant scientific mind famously wrote that religion and science have a lot in common; we are both looking for the creator of all things and the moment it happened, the collision of those two polarised sides and disciples to their cause always going to cause ructions. Oh and if you think we will get wiped out when they finally switch on the Hadron Converter then fear not as that very experiment has been occurring in the Earths outer atmosphere for billions of years.

Apart from the science stuff the appeal of Browns books is in the way he pulls you in with all the intriguing code breaking and history stuff, that in itself enjoyable as you actually learn stuff, and then finishes the adventures off in the modern day with likewise characters and a traditional thriller ending. He seems to be able to combine two worlds of religion, science and history like no other, a clever and appealing mix to the masses.

Anyone has read this and the DaVinci book will know it won't take long to convert the book into a screenplay. If ever a writer wrote for the book of the film then it's this guy. But those authors who criticize his books, and there are many, are just angry because no ones buying their books because this is what 90% of readers actually want. Any method that introduces reading and history to people who never pick up books has to be good.

-The Cast-

Tom Hanks ... Robert Langdon
Ewan McGregor ... Camerlengo Patrick McKenna
Ayelet Zurer ... Vittoria Vetra
Stellan Skarsgård ... Commander Richter
Pierfrancesco Favino ... Inspector Olivetti
Nikolaj Lie Kaas ... Assassin
Armin Mueller-Stahl ... Cardinal Strauss
Thure Lindhardt ... Chartrand
David Pasquesi ... Claudio Vincenzi
Cosimo Fusco ... Father Simeon
Victor Alfieri ... Lieutenant Valenti
Franklin Amobi ... Cardinal Lamasse
Curt Lowens ... Cardinal Ebner
Bob Yerkes ... Cardinal Guidera
Marc Fiorini ... Cardinal Baggia

-The Plot-

A canister of antimatter produced at the CERN labs Large Hadron Converter facility in Switzerland has been stolen, a murdered scientist and a ransom demand quickly following. The canister has been turned into a bomb and placed somewhere in Rome, the Vatican police force and Swiss ceremonial guard on the case and ready to evacuate. But Rome is chokablock right now because the Pope has just died, the conclave in session to pick the new one, thousands of devout Catholics and tourists awaiting the white smoke in St Peters Square.

It's apparent the two events are connected, the ransom demand coming from the same guy who seems to have kidnapped the 'Preferatti', the four preferred candidates to be Pope. Without those Cardinals safely locked up in the Vatican the selection process may not go on as tradition dictates and the crowds will get restless. The Catholic Church survives on traditions and order. During that papal changeover period the 'Camerlengo', Father Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), is temporarily Gods representative on earth and will be making the decisions in Vatican City until a new pope is found and needs all the help he can get.

So enter conscripted Professor Robert Langdon (Hanks), a surprising choice by the Catholic Church to try and help out in their dilemma, the same chap who somewhat disproved the official narrative of the bible in his previous code busting adventure and so has already ruined the Churches day once already.

Langdon just so happens to be currently researching a book on the prime suspect for this outrage, the 'Iluminatti', an ancient ostracized band of scientist and artistes who were stamped on by the Catholic Church for openly trying to disprove religion through science. When Galileo said the Earth wasn't flat it caused quite a stir back in the day.

Langdon is hastily whisked over to Rome by the Vatican and is joined on the case by a beautiful CERN scientist, Professor Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer); she too emotionally tied to the mystery. The key to finding the bomb is to find the Iluminatti church, a secret hiding place from 400 years back that myth dictates was the place where they would meet and talk science, but the location hidden by a secret pathway across Rome. If you were good enough to follow the secret trail then that's your entrance into the club. If Langdon, Vetra and the cops can find the first marker then they believe the bomb will be at the end of the trail and so save the epicentre of western religion, for better or for worse.

-The Conclusion-

Obviously if you have read the two Langdon books, as I have, then the films will be somewhat of an anticlimax. But for me there's enough story and frantic tempo in the narrative to make the films worth renting and if you did enjoy the first film then you will be cool with the second effort. You know what you are going to get and by casting the likeable Tom Hanks as the lead man the studio are going to pull in a big audience and so a shared experience.

This film does not bare close inspection though, more than a couple of black holes in the plot. It's never explained how the Illuminati assassin (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) is linked to the other main culprit and where the payments of cash are coming from that goes through on his lap top. The casting is also dreadful, worse even than The Phantom Menace, hence Ewan McGregor in the equation. Hanks for me never convinces away from comedy and his Langdon is all wrong. This is more of an angst ridden Dennis Quaid role for me and it does detract from the film.

Five minutes were cut when the original version received an R rating that would incur at least a 100 million hit on the gross. This production was also the first big movie to be hit by the Hollywood writers strike. It has made a lot of wonga though, a projected $400 world-wide to date, already more than the far superior Titanic.

Some of the history stuff and code breaking is always interesting in context in the film and I feel ads to the product. Just as Coca Cola hijacked and wrapped Santa Claus up in red and white back in the 1920s and rubbed from history his traditional green, Jesus claimed the 25th of December as this birthday from the Pagans and the devil and all that, Christ probably born in September, religions generally adopting previous facets and days and locations of older religions to build there legend. If creationists don't believe in evolution then they only need look at the growth of Christianity from its various mixed religious roots from hundreds of years before A.D. Religions from long ago just explained away things they didn't understand with the supernatural, and if you didn't go with that then off with your head. Uncertainly breeds anarchy, as we saw in Iraq.

= = = = = = Special Features = = = = = =

'Writing Angels & Demons'

Director Ron Howard tries to convince us he loved making this movie but its by-the-numbers stuff for him and clearly a studio job film, one they 'ask' their top guys to do to secure future funding for the studio. This is the permanently Baseball capped directors first ever sequel in his forty-one-year directing career (In 2010 he would have made movies in five different decades believe it or not) and he was paid very nicely for it.

'Handling Props'

A behind the scenes look at recreating the historic locations and artefacts.

'This is an Ambigram'

Dan Browns main character is named after his professor friend who, among other things, creates ambigrams, words that read the same upside down and back to front. Ana is a palindrome, reading back to front, but if you tip it upside down you can see how tricky it is to create an ambigram.

= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
Imdb.com scores it 6.8 out of 10.0 (41,411 votes)
Any 2 films for 2 nights for £5:00
RuN-TiMe 140 minutes
= = = = = = = = = = = = =

Summary: The Dan Brown money machine