Angels and Demons 2.5/4 stars

I got out the pre-screening earlier tonight. Below is my rating system and I explain why I rated the movie the way I did. I then totaled all 8 categories and divided by 2.

Where I won pre-screening passes, I'm glad I didn't spend money on this. I'd probably feel like I didn't get my money's worth.

I would definitely recommend anyone wanting to see this should probably wait for the DVD so they can watch it on ClearPlay.

I can honestly say that if I never watch this again, I'll be ok.


1 = Excellent
.75 = Good
.5 = Mediocre
.25 = Bad
0 = Unforgivable

Plot 1
Religious history, with a mixture of fictitious mystery and peril while Rome stands to be destroyed by an Anti-Matter bomb...is pretty intriguing, to me.


Storyline .75
Dan brown did, what I felt is an excellent job of laying out the storyline in the book, I felt the movie delivered on this in an very clear manner, even though at times the Robert Langdon character often has to speak fast to get the information to the audience, but ti still works.

Due to the amount of information flying past you in the movie, as opposed to the book, where you can take your time to re-read and let the information soak in, I couldn't give this aspect a full point.


Acting 0.5
Meh, overall it was pretty mediocre. No gripping character development, until the last 7 or so minutes of the movie when the villain comes out and we learn his motive. While admirable as his motives are having this come out right at the end, didn't save the acting of the over all film.


Dialogue 1
I found myself fascinated by all the historical facts they could squeeze into this movie. Now mind you I haven't done my Illuminati homework, so I can only trust that the information in the movie is fact. I really am too lazy to look up how much fact there was in the movie.

Special effects 0.75
Here's a small spoiler, if you haven't read the book, or didn't catch this in the trailers, the anti-matter bomb does go off, and the explosion looks really pretty. However we can only assume this is what an anti-matter explosion looks like, because...well, theoretical anti-matter cannot be harnessed.


Action 0.5
Not really too much action in this film. You have a movie that has Landgon solving the puzzle of where each Catholic Cardinal would be killed. There's no room left to wonder if what is going to happen next. 20 minutes into the film Ron Howard has Robert Langdon laying out what you are going to see over the next hour, plus. So nothing really left to the imagination.

I didn't even find myself worried if they were going to find the bomb in enough time, even though we all knew they would...otherwise Rome would have been removed from the face of the earth and we know that wouldn't have been a good ending to a movie. Perhaps that's why "Knowing" is going to the dollar theaters soon.


Sound 0.5
Again, meh. Nothing really spectacular that you are dying to listen for.


Tone 0
Here's the kicker to the movie: there is relatively nothing positive about this movie! It's dark, literally lots of scenes happen in the dark, but there is brutal killings and martyrdom happening in the movie. This is gory for a PG-13.

Ron Howard, I feel really pushed the gore factor to the limits. He did just enough to make it hard, but soft enough to miss an R rating.

I'm going to give some spoilers: An eye ball that has been cut out of the socket, you see the eye ball for a good 2, maybe 3 seconds and the head it's been taken from.

People are being seared with branding irons. Near the end you get to finally see someone branded on camera.

A man that has died within the day has rats crawling on him and they are eating his flesh.

You see 2 men perish by fire, and this doesn't look like a stunt guy in a fire suit, it looks so real that this drove me to also give the special effects a higher than mediocre rating, because it was convincingly real.

A man has been killed, and when someone attempts to perform CPR on him blood spurts on to someone's face, then they realize the dying man's lung have been punctured.


Based on the overall tone and gore, I'd have to recommend this be viewed on ClearPlay, instead of theaters.