Angels and Demons Details

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[Highly rated reviewer]

superb......................

Angels and Demons is the sequel to The Da Vinci Code which is also based on the novel and works of Dan Brown.

The CERN who work on experiments using antimatter through the medium of physics summon Robert Langdon the Harvard symbologist played by Tom Hanks to investigate a murder victim branded with the Illuminati ambigram and also to prevent a terrorist act against the Vatican.

Robert discovers that the Illuminati (the secret society) plan to kill four Roman Catholic cardinals and destroy St. Peter's Basilica with the stolen antimatter in the form of a bomb during a papal conclave.

This film also stars Ayelet Zurer as Vittoria Vetra who is a CERN scientist, Ewan McGregor who plays the Camerlengo Patrick McKenna and Stellan Skarsgård who plays Commander Richter the Head of the Swiss Guard.

Angels and Demons is directed by Ron Howard (formerly Richie from Happy Days).

Well worth watching !

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If you loved the book, DON'T see the movie!

I don't normally write film reviews. At the end of the day - movies are subjective, like music, and so if you like it - then it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks,

However, having just seen Angels and Demons - a film I was so looking forward to, being a huge fan of the book - I couldn't not.

From the very start, I was disappointed. The film dives straight into the plot - side stepping key themes and important parts of the story. Leaving out a Key character - the Director of CERN. Important relationships in the book aren't told on screen, Vittoria and her father for example. Even the one between Langdon and Vittoria isn't played out well. Huge chunks of the book just weren't there - and the artistic take on the Hassassin just didn't work. Dan Brown explains him clearly in the book and the on screen translation didn't happen for me. Even worse - making the Carmelengo Irish just because Ewan McGregor couldn't do an Italian accent just isn't right...

The ending much the same, mis told and so innaccurate that a lot of what made the book so exciting and intelligent were sadly lacking from the film.

That said - the special effects were good - and the acting was top class - its not the actors fault that the script they were working from was missing integrity. The only accurate part of the movies was the phrase at the start saying 'Based on the Novel by Dan Brown'. Had it said 'Loosely, in that I scanned the blurb, instead of reading the book and made a movie - based on the Novel by Dan Brown' that would have been more accurate. Seriously - if you really enjoyed the book - then DON'T watch the movie. You'll feel cheated.