Category Archives: Vatican Culture

Angels and Demons (2009)

From IMDB:

Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon works with a nuclear physicist to solve a murder and prevent a terrorist act against the Vatican during one of the significant events within the church.

From Netflix and Amazon Prime you can stream this 2 hour 18 minute film.

Based on the Dan Brown novel,  this film stars Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon and Ewen McGregor as Camerlengo Patrick McKenna.

Awarding  the category “Acceptable Trash” to this messy mixture of Catholic church misinformation and violent conspiracy theory nonsense  is being charitable.

With this review I wanted only to point out that Ewen McGregor was a mere 38 at filming and looks very young.  If you want a visual shock, then watch him at 50 playing the lead role in “Halston” which is reviewed in this blog. In fact, first watch “Halston” and then watch a bit of “Angels and Demons”  (if you can even stomach a little bit of the farce) to see what a difference age can make. For that matter Tom Hanks in this film is no spring chicken.

At least one positive plot point comes to mind:  It takes the entire film to reveal the true villains.  Leading us to suspect one by one many of the characters is well done.

Don’t bother.