The movie version of Angels & Demons displays many of the features of 24: the events occur within a day, the time is displayed on the screen every few minutes, a gruesome murder occurs practically every hour, there are explosions, and an impressive body count. But, for all of this furious pacing, I found Angels & Demons a bit draggy. Perhaps reading the book a few days before I saw the movie affected my frame of mind because the movie version makes a number of changes from Dan Brown’s novel. Some are good, like cutting out the most unbelievable scene in the novel: Robert Langdon jumping out of an exploding helicopter (and surviving). But some are bad, like skipping the kidnapping of Robert Langdon’s sexy physicist partner by the hired assassin. All in all, Angels & Demons is a mixed bag. GRADE: B-.
Can’t help but think the wrong director and the wrong actor made these films less than they might have been. Not that the books are great literature. But, for instance, Clint Eastwood made a far better movie of THE BRIDGES of MADISON COUNTY than the book would suggest.
I agree with you, Patti. Ron Howard is the WRONG director for these movies. But when THE DA VINCI CODE took in $750 million, Howard had huge leverage to make ANGELS & DEMONS.
Patti’s right – Howard is good for certain movies but is much too literal a director here. It needed someone willing to go a little crazy.
And Hanks? Not for this.
Once again George does the heavy lifting so we don’t have to!
Glad to do the “heavy lifting.” ANGELS & DEMONS contains absolutely no surprises so your comment about the movie needing someone “willing to go a little crazy” is spot on.
Sorry Drago and Cap’n Bob but WORDPRESS is not displaying your comments to this post (or my replies). I’ve tried to everything I know to restore them. My IT expert is currently touring Iceland so he’s not in position to help. I’ll ask Patrick to solve this problem when he returns to Pittsburgh. Until then, my apologies.