THE CRITIC-AL LIST
Reviews by Alan Jones
5 STAR FAB - 1 STAR RUBBISH

Salt
The Expendables
The Last Airbender
The Sorcerer's Apprentice
Inception
Predators
The Twilight Saga:Eclipse
Toy Story 3
Hot Tub Time Machine
Iron Man 2
Repo Men
The Collector
Clash of the Titans
Shelter
How To Train Your Dragon
Kick-Ass
Shutter Island
Alice In Wonderland
The Crazies
Case 39
The Wolfman
Legion
The Lovely Bones
Black Death
Daybreakers
Avatar
Ninja Assassin
The Descent: Part 2
Amer
The Twilight Saga: New Moon
The Box
2012
Disney's A Christmas Carol
The Horseman
Solomon Kane
Pandorum
Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs
District 9
An Education
G.I. Joe: The Rise Of The Cobra
Orphan
A Perfect Getaway
The Imaginarium Of
Doctor Parnassus
Up
Harry Potter
And The Half-Blood Prince
The Taking of Pelham 123
Transformers
The Revenge Of The Fallen
Antichrist
Terminator Salvation
Last House On The Left
Inglorious Basterds
Angels & Demons
Adventureland
Star Trek
Crank: High Voltage
Coraline
Dragonball Evolution
Let The Right One In
Drag Me To Hell
Race to Witch Mountain
Knowing
Monsters Vs. Aliens
Not Quite Hollywood
Lesbian Vampire Killers
Martyrs
The Children
Surveillance
Watchmen
The Unborn
The International
Friday The 13th
Franklyn
Push
Punisher:War Zone
The Good The Bad And
The Weird
Hush
Underworld
The Rise OF The Lycans
My Bloody Valentine
Bolt
Slumdog Millionaire

Directed by Ron Howard. Starring Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgard and Ayelet Zurer. Action/Adventure, USA, 134 min. Web Site.

Slightly better than THE DA VINCI CODE, director Ron Howard’s last stab and putting author Dan Brown’s brand of airport bestseller on film, ANGELS & DEMONS is still a pile of over-long stodgy dullness.

Positioned as a sequel to DVC, although published three years before, A&D finds Harvard University symbologist Robert Langdon (returning Tom Hanks, minus that awful mullet hair-do) dragged to Rome to unravel the mysteries of the ancient Illuminati after the Pope dies. This secret society, with members in very high St Peter’s places, has kidnapped the four main cardinals who are likely to succeed as Pontiff. And planted a super-destructive anti-matter bomb that will blow up the Vatican City.  Can Langdon decipher clues kindly left by the Illuminati (centuries old science-worshippers railing against approved Roman Catholic creationist theories) to get to four churches in time to save the cardinals from Air/Fire/Earth/Water death and find out the hidden location of the bomb? Don’t worry if you can’t follow the SCOOBY-DOO-for-adults plot. Every so often Hanks stops dead in his tracks huffing-and-puffing over rooftops, rushing through secret passages and diving into catacombs to deliver tomes of expository dialogue so we know what’s going on. Which when boiled down to absolute basics actually isn’t very much that makes any sense.  Anyone familiar with Roman traffic will know that getting from the Pantheon to the Piazza Navona within an hour, while detouring to the Vatican archives for essential Galileo research, and holding bitch-fests with progressive priest Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) and Commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgard), the surly head of the Swiss Guard, is impossible. And what about the ‘thrilling’ climax in which McGregor reveals he has a helicopter pilot license to further dial up the daftness of the explosive spectacle? Karen Black, your AIRPORT 1975 air hostess role is finally usurped! Sharing many stylistic elements, architecture, religious history and pretentious rubbish with DVC, including the single-day time frame, A&D is directed by Howard with about as much urgent efficiency as a governmental probe into MP’s expenses. How come Howard is sometimes so FROST/NIXON good but Lost Fixing such lumbering material as this clumsy Catholic caper? The acting barely rises above adequate by coasting Hanks, miscast McGregor or cardboard heavy Skarsgard. Apart from ever-dependable Armin Mueller-Stahl adding his usual gravitas to the red-herring villain role of Cardinal Strauss. As for Ayelet Zurer playing gorgeous nuclear physicist Vittoria Vetra, also a dab hand at Latin translation, where is Madonna when you need her for the perfect role? At least Rome, well, the parts the production were allowed to film in for two weeks, looks wonderful. Is it just me though or shouldn’t the church clues have been a little more obscure rather than pointing to practically every major famous tourist attraction?

A&D should be put in A&E but that still won’t stop it taking a fortune from the Brown brigade who should know better based on the disaster that was DVC.

Alan Jones

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