Angels and Demons Movie Review

Apparently the Catholic Church is not very happy with the film “Angels and Demons”, from the Dan Browne novel with the same name. I hadn’t expected the Vatican to have a movie review side to their business, but having seen the film I know what they mean.

I thought the Tomb Raider films had pretty much scraped the barrel on dodgy plotlines, evil blokes in cassocks and thousand year old secret societies. I was wrong. And at least with them we got Lara Croft to look at and some nice jungle scenery every now and then. Here we just got Tom Hanks with his furrowed brow and the inside of some churches. And a lady physicist in high heels who occasionally popped up to translate some Latin or spout some duff physics.

It took all my iron will and resolve to keep from having hysterics when the bad guy, thoroughly nasty all the way to his “straight from central casting” steel rimmed glasses, and having just laid waste to half of the Italian police force, pointed his weapon at our hero and said “I will not shoot you, because you do not carry a gun and I have not been ordered to”. I’m pretty sure that as he turned away I heard him add “..and also because you are Tom Hanks”.

The good news is that I spotted the bad guy right at the start. The better news for me is that I did this without having had to wade through the book first.

And to think I could have gone into the screen next door and watched Star Trek again. What a waste.