Expert symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) follows ancient clues on a heart-racing hunt through Rome to find the four Cardinals kidnapped by the deadly secret society, the Illuminati. With the Cardinals' lives on the line, and the Camerlengo (Ewan McGregor) desperate for help, Langdon embarks on a nonstop, action-packed race through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, and the most secretive vault on Earth!

CRITIQUE

While it is nice to be proven wrong, I still can’t exactly recommend this further adventure of academic symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) to anyone other than the novel’s rabid fan base. While both actor and director Ron Howard seem to be more than up to the challenge to prove they're fully engaged to the project this time around, the film is still undone by a last twenty or so minutes so horrible they’re downright comical.

Still, for two hours I was willing to look past obvious shortcomings and hammy happenstance and admit to being adequately entertained. There is a zippy efficiency to Akiva Goldsman (I Am Legend) and David Koepp’s (Ghost Town) streamlined adaptation. It has a hot-button immediacy that’s compelling, and even though I knew how absurd it all was I still felt the need to keep watching anyhow. Howard achieves a breathless pace that’s stimulating, and even though the constantly ticking clocks got a little old I was still curious to discover how all this religiously-fueled absurdity was going to play itself out.

What’s nice is that the film actually comes to the perfect coda. Sure it’s (almost hysterically) unbelievable, but I’d be lying through my teeth if I didn’t say it was still freakishly satisfying. Langdon manages to figure out what’s been going on from the beginning, his female sidekick (a charming Ayelet Zurer) gets to finally do something worthwhile and the head religious figure (a fine, if slightly disinterested, Ewan McGregor) gets to potentially martyr himself in front of all of Vatican City. It’s a thrilling turn of events, and while it still features plot holes big enough to carry ten thousand replica copies of the original Ten Commandments through the whole thing is so breathtaking I simply didn’t care.

Problem is, this isn’t the ending of the movie, not by a long shot. There are still another full twenty or so minutes to go, and to say Angels & Demons falls completely to pieces would be a disservice to all things that ever fell to pieces. Simply put, what worked (sort of, anyway) in a book doesn’t come close to doing so in a motion picture. The entire last act is twisty for the sake of being twisty, everything that came before a two-hour red herring totally superfluous to the actual denouement.

Worse, everything I was willing to gloss over before this foolish climax took place suddenly comes to the forefront, all of the dramatic missteps and plot deficiencies now looking the size of an oceanic cruise ship. It’s unintentionally hysterical, and by the time fire was set inside the Vatican and flashbacks upon flashbacks were levied to try and make sense of it all I couldn’t help but audibly groan.

(Movie review excerpt written by Sara Michelle Fetters)

Two versions of Angels & Demons are available on Disc 1. The Extended Edition includes a few more character moments and runs approximately 8 minutes longer (for a total of 146 minutes) than the Theatrical Cut.

THE VIDEO

Angels & Demons is presented in 2.40:1/1080p on a 50GB disc and encoded with AVC. Being a 2009 production, the picture quality is excellent. It looks very clear and bright, and is a high definition success. Colors are vibrant, detail is excellent, definition is strong, and black levels and dark tones are pretty solid. There aren’t any flaws in the picture; image softness is not an issue, and neither are pixilation or compression artifacts.

THE AUDIO

Angels & Demons is presented in a very solid 5.1 DTS-HD Master Audio track. Surrounds are active at all the right times, especially during the action scenes with the sound effects and Hans Zimmer’s music rocking your ears, adding atmosphere to the room. All sound is crisp and clear, and extremely well reproduced across the front and rear speakers, covering the whole soundfield.

The film is also available in a French 5.1 DTS-HD dub track. Optional subtitles include English, English SDH, and French only (for such a high-profile film I’d have imagined there to be more than that).

THE EXTRAS

The first disc contains the movie in a theatrical edition or the extended edition. A commentary track or deleted scenes are not available on this release unfortunately.

Sony’s CineChat option allows viewers to send instant messages to friends while watching the film together.

A MovieIQ trivia track features in-movie information about the cast, crew, music and production via BD-Live. The pop-up box takes up nearly half of the right-side of the screen. Viewers can keep the box open during the entire time of the film or have it pop up (simply click “enter” on their remote when information becomes available as indicated by a highlighted icon in the top right corner).

The disc is equipped with Sony’s bookmarking function, and is also BD-Live enabled.

Disc 2 offers all of the bonus material in high definition using the AVC encode.

Rome Was Not Built In a Day (HD, 17:30): A well-produced/edited featurette that offers interviews with Ron Howard, Tom Hanks and key production crew, and goes over the production (locations around Rome), costume design (getting details right), production design (recreating the Sistine Chapel and paintings, building their own St. Petersburg square set on a 20-acre parking lot in Hollywood Park, California), visual effects (deciding between practical sets and creating them digitally, shooting with green screen), editorial (editing), and music (Hans Zimmer doing his thing). There’s plenty of on-set footage and movie clips spliced in-between the interviews. Also explored is the creation of the explosion, with Ron Howard and other crew describing the process, showing animatics, various digital effects plates and footage from the set.

Writing Angels & Demons (HD, 10:09): Ron Howard, producer Brian Grazer, screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp, and author Dan Brown discuss adapting the best-selling book. There’s some good information here, like revealing parts of Brown’s research for the book and the filmmakers commenting on adding a story element to the script that wasn’t in the book. Distinguishing between the two films, Goldsman jokingly says, “You could sort of say, ‘Hey, just in case you think we talked a lot last time, this time we’ll run.”

Characters in Search of The True Story (HD, 17:10): Howard, Brown and the cast share their thoughts of bringing Brown’s characters to the screen in terms of character and performance. This featurette is fairly average but a good watch overall, and these actors actually have something to say.

CERN: Pushing the Frontiers of Knowledge (HD, 14:52): A very interesting look at one of the world’s largest and most respected scientific research centers (they have 20 European member states, and the numbers are growing). Cameras go inside the subterranean complex to give viewers an overview of what they do, currently experimenting on particle acceleration. Ron Howard explains, “Scientists at CERN are trying to recreate the big bang. They’re hoping to understand how our universe came into being.” The featurette gets a little technical and more in-depth as it goes on, which is pretty insightful. CERN operates on the rules that they cannot use the facility for military research and they must publish all of their findings in detail. They also offer tours to people, which is exciting (sign me up!)

Handlings Props (HD, 11:35): Property master Trish Gallaher Glenn discusses creating some of the more important (and specially designed) props that show up in the film, like the anti-matter canister (a funny if brief bit with Tom Hanks handling the prop), the Galileo book from the Vatican archive, the map of Rome, the golden chalice used to count ballets during the vote for the Pope, the brands, and the blue box given to Langdon at the end of the movie.

Angels & Demons: The Full Story (HD, 9:46): This featurette goes on location in Rome to the Piazza square on the first few days of the shoot, the crew filming scenes that are hard to do logistically because of all the people that are there, though a lot of them also stood in as background extras as Tom Hanks and co-star Ayelet Zurer walked through the square. There are also bits on “Dressing the Vatican” which discusses the set, some costumes, Tom Hanks doing a stunt, and Ewan McGregor commenting on his final scene. (The title of this featurette is a bit misleading, because the full story

This is an Ambigram (HD, 4:46): Brown explains an ambigram is a word that can be read both upside down and right-side up (Ambi=Both, Gram=Word), and says they are hard to create. Here viewers are introduced to artist John Langdon (also the author of Wordplay, which makes a cameo in the film), the inspiration for Brown’s leading character, who was asked by Howard to contribute “ambigram designs” for the classical elements earth, fire, air and water, as well as a design for Illuminati.

Blu-ray Exclusive

Path of Illumination: Follow Robert Langdon’s journey through Rome and unlock the hidden secrets of the Illuminati. Select from five marked locations on the map. Once on the path, you will unearth in-depth historical facts, film clips and behind the scenes footage (narrated by Ron Howard). Explore each location and see if you can unlock the Path of Illumination. This is pretty cool, and has educational value as well!

Disc 3: (DVD-ROM)

Hans Zimmer Music Studio (Powered by Sequel 2): Play around with music from the film as arranged by famous composer Hans Zimmer. This is trial-only version of the software contains a small selection of audio content from the retail version, but includes all instruments and effects (it will work for 90 days and then you have to buy the full version to continue using it).

A Digital Copy of the film is included here for portable media players or your PC, PSP, Mac or iPod.

FINAL THOUGHTS