Angels Demons bests Da Vinci

In theaters Friday: Drag Me to Hell, Up

New on DVD/Blu-ray: Killshot, New in Town, Powder Blue

Dan Brown’s Harvard hero and symbologist Prof. Robert Langdon is no Han Solo. He’s really not even Luke Skywalker. He’s more like C-3PO, a fountain of knowledge, sure, but not someone you’d ever bet on when the chips are down. With that in mind, it is startling how much of Angels & Demons actually works. After the somnambulant The Da Vinci Code, Ron Howard’s sequel has legitimate thrills and set pieces, and more literal fire and brimstone than advertised.

Tom Hanks returns as Langdon, this time slimmer and without the wet mop combed-back hair that made his vanilla performance last time even more distracting. Angels begins with the funeral of a beloved pope. On the eve of a conclave to determine who his successor will be the four most popular and probable replacements are kidnapped by a mysterious assailant who may be an agent of the Illuminati, an ancient secret society that has long been at odds with the Vatican in a duel between the proclamations of Catholicism and findings of science. Langdon is called in to track the kidnapper’s clues and prevent each of the candidates for the papacy from being killed every hour on the hour before a final, devastating terrorist act could destroy the entire Vatican at midnight. Complicating things are Stellan Skarsgaard as the gruff chief of the Swiss Guard who handles security for His Holiness, and Ewan McGregor as the Carmelengo, the Pope’s assistant, who’s close relationship with the church head could hide secrets of it’s own.

With a ticking time bomb on hand, the truncated timeline of the film forces an intensity and 24-ish “There’s no time to explain!” plot structure. While some of the dialogue is stale and uninteresting, at least Howard nailed the pacing this time out.

Dan Brown’s novel plays fast and loose with Art History—like Da Vinci did with early Christian history—as Hanks and an Italian scientist named Vittoria, race through the streets, chapels and libraries of Rome like adult versions of The Goonies, but without Chunk or much sense of humor. In fact, original Goonie Josh Brolin would’ve made a far better Langdon than Hanks. Where was he when Howard was casting?

I did enjoy seeing some of the inner workings of papal succession. The conclave, the College of Cardinals, the Carmelengo, and so on. To Howard’s credit, Rome has rarely looked this regal and intimidating on film. One suspenseful sequence has Langdon locked in the Vatican Archives when the electricity and air are cut off. Trapped without any oxygen, the blurred scenes lit by eery red emergency lights are unlike anything Howard has ever put on screen.

Ultimately, Angels & Demons is pulp fiction for people who hit the salad bar at Whole Foods instead of the drive-thru for something with beef and cheese, but it won’t win any awards, even if its vast improvement on a leaden successor puts it miles ahead of all those lukewarm Indiana Jones imitations like National Treasure.