Angels & Demons (2009)
★★½ — Angels & Demons (2009)
There's a moment somewhere in the middle of Angels & Demons where you realise you've stopped leaning forward. You're watching it. You're following it. But you're not in it. And that, more than anything else, is the film's central problem.
Ron Howard and Tom Hanks are back, Dan Brown's conspiracy machinery is humming away, and on paper the setup is genuinely gripping: a secret brotherhood, a kidnapped cardinal, an antimatter bomb ticking somewhere beneath Vatican City, and Robert Langdon sprinting through Rome trying to piece it all together before the clock hits zero. It sounds like it should crackle. It doesn't, not really. Not the way it ought to.
I reviewed The Da Vinci Code and came away with a real appreciation for what it managed to do: it made you feel like you were being let in on something dangerous, something the establishment would rather you didn't know. There was a charge to it. Angels & Demons has the same ingredients arranged in roughly the same order, but that charge is mostly gone. What's left is a thriller that moves efficiently from clue to chase to church and back again, like a very well-produced checklist.
Hanks slips back into Langdon's tweed jacket without missing a beat, and fair play to him, he makes the character feel grounded even when the plot around him is doing anything but. Ayelet Zurer brings a quiet, composed intelligence to physicist Vittoria Vetra, and she's a welcome presence. The two of them have a decent working chemistry, even if the script doesn't give them much room to breathe as actual people rather than puzzle-solving machines. Rome looks stunning throughout, and the score keeps things suitably tense. These aren't small things. They're just not enough.
The Illuminati angle should be fascinating, and there are brief moments where the science versus faith argument gets genuinely interesting. But every time the film threatens to sit with an idea for a moment, it shoves you towards the next set piece instead. The questions it raises about religion, about history, about what institutions will do to protect themselves, get buried under melodrama and manufactured urgency. The twists, when they arrive, feel telegraphed rather than earned. There's no real jolt of surprise, no moment where you sit back and think "well, I did not see that coming."
It's polished, it's watchable, and it's occasionally exciting in a perfectly serviceable summer blockbuster sort of way. But it lacks the boldness, the sense of genuine risk, that made its predecessor stick in the memory. This plays like a capable imitation of the thing rather than the thing itself. Standard-issue thriller wearing a smarter coat, as I said. The coat fits, but you know it's not bespoke.
And then there's Inferno (2016), the third film in the series, which manages to be even more forgettable than this one, so at least Angels & Demons has that particular bragging right. It's the middle child of a trilogy that peaked first and declined from there.
Not heresy. Not a disaster. Just a film that had every opportunity to be genuinely compelling and settled for being fine. Two and a half stars.
Rating: ★★½ | Year: 2009 | Watched: 2025-10-04
Where to watch
Watch in the UK
Stream: Sony Pictures Core Amazon Channel
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Watch in the US
Stream: Philo · Starz Amazon Channel · Starz · Starz Apple TV channel
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Related on Movies With Macca
More from Ron Howard: How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000) · Inferno (2016) · The Da Vinci Code (2006) · A Beautiful Mind (2001)
More with Tom Hanks: Toy Story 4 (2019) · Inferno (2016) · The Da Vinci Code (2006) · Borat Subsequent Moviefilm: Delivery of Prodigious Bribe to American Regime for Make Benefit Once Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (2020)
More from Italy: Nightmare City (1980) · Cemetery Man (1994) · One Way or Another (1975) · Chicken for Linda! (2023)
More from the 2000s: Kirikou and the Wild Beasts (2005) · Anchorman: The Legend of Ron Burgundy (2004) · Daredevil (2003) · Apocalypto (2006)
More thriller: Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956) · Angst (1983) · The Long Walk (2025) · Punishment Park (1971)
More mystery: Mononoke the Movie: The Phantom in the Rain (2024) · Mononoke the Movie: Chapter II - The Ashes of Rage (2025) · Carnival of Souls (1962) · One Way or Another (1975)
