Movies By UpCloseUSA.com

                                                                            Angels and Demons (Two-and-a-Half Stars)
U. S.; Ron Howard, 2009
       
For sheer off-the charts looniness, it’ll be hard to top the furious plot and flabbergasting climax of Angels and Demons, Ron Howard‘s brisk, routinely spectacular-looking new movie of another book by Dan (The Da Vinci Code) Brown -- the Catholic apocalyptic thriller specialist and concocter of the daffiest conspiracy theories this side of Chicken Little.
     
Church activists have nothing to fear. But Brown, whose books I will never, never read, even if his publisher waterboards me, has been lucky enough, once more, to have his special brand of unholy foolishness rendered by director Howard and star Tom Hanks -- two filmmakers of such quiet skill and bedrock ordinarily-Joe humanity and sensibleness that they are able to ground their author’s wildest and goofiest flights of fancy in some kind of tongue-in-cheek, good-humored sanity. Imagine another movie of Angels and Demons starring James Woods in Hanks’ role, and directed by Dario (Suspiria) Argento, and you’re envisioning a gory freak show that really could drive you into the mouth of madness. (And might, actually, be more entertaining.)
   
But somehow, Hanks and Howard, those two all-America nice guys, fudge their way through the whole sacred mess. It’s no snap. Brown’s premise (streamlined by screenwriters Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp) is truly outlandish: built on what’s supposedly a contemporary resurgence of the ancient pro-science, anti-religion cult/secret organization, the Illuminati.
   
Roaring for revenge, the naughty new Illuminati resurface in modern Rome, assassinate the Pope, and, even as the college of cardinals mulls over succession, kidnap four of the preferiti (i.e. top candidates for brand-new Pope), fixing to slaughter them like ancient martyrs, one by one, after branding them with “earth, fire, air and water” tattoos at four scenic Roman churches, whose locations are tipped off by tell-tale clues in Bernini‘s religious statues.
   
Wow! How’s that for a high concept? Only one man alive apparently can figure all this out: that sterling agnostic, Harvard symbologist  and Da Vinci Code-cracker Professor Robert Langdon (Hanks) -- who has been rushed off to Rome by the Vatican police and hooked up with sex-bomb physicist Vittorio Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), the two of them gamely diving right into this sacred scavenger hunt with only six hours or so ‘til what may be doomsday.
     
Mind you, when I say that symbologist Langdon hooks up with sex-goddess physicist Vetra, I‘m not implying any Roman hanky-panky. There are no sexual tensions between these two, nothing that might get the motors running on a modern Legion of Decency. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine sex of any kind taking place in this movie, which seems to transpire in an alternate world where Bernini’s statues are the prime hotties, where the angels have stolen all the condoms, and where Rome’s prostitutes have all gone off to celebrate Cabiria Day.
     
What is a physicist from Switzerland doing in this grand slumgullion of Catholic shtick, Hans Zimmer’s choirs, mass cardinal serial killings, blood baths in the sacristy and action set-pieces in incredible Hollywood reproductions of the Vatican? I‘m glad you asked. It seems that Vittoria was hanging around the CERN Large Haldron Collider one day, waiting for some anti-matter to get cooked up, when somebody rotten breached security, whacked her fellow scientist and vamoosed with the anti-matter (or God Particle?), which is now, it seems, part of the Illuminati’s fiendish plot to stage their own depraved version of the Silence of the Blood of the Lamb.
       
In fact, we’re set by now for a mind-boggling climax/finale which, what with the nuking of the Vatican, the grisly preferiti massacres, and the shootouts in the papal chambers, may end up as Rome’s worst day since Peter Ustinov‘s mad songster/lutenist Nero set it afire in Quo Vadis.
       
Incredibly, until then, Langdon and Vittoria still keep faithfully, and chastely, racing around the city from church to church -- aided, in a manner of speaking, by fashion plate Inspector Olivetti of the Vatican Police (Pierfranceso Favino) and dour Commander Richter of the Vatican‘s Swiss Guards (somber Swede Stellan Skarsgard) -- each time missing out by minutes in saving yet another cardinal from yet another branding (with “Earth-Air-Fire-Water” tattoos) and yet another hideous death.

Meanwhile the Illuminati’s crack assassin, played by sure shot Dane Nikolaj Lie Kaas as Mr. Gray (a refugee from Reservoir Dogs?), runs just minutes ahead of them, killing more people with fewer guns than anybody since Clint Eastwood knocked off hundreds of Nazi soldiers backing up Richard Burton in Where Eagles Dare.
       
As you can see, this is a movie that could use a Nero or two. Or maybe a Mel Brooks to show up at the convocation in papal finery, saying “It’s good to be the Pope.”  But, while all this stuff is exploding before our eyes,  the college of cardinals keeps toughing it out, determined to pick a Pope, no matter what the Hell is going on outside or in, even if the whole blessed place blows up -- and debating so many improbable last minute papal candidates that I began to wonder if we’d get a campaign from  Fox News’ resident evil altar boy, Sean the Sham Hammity, backed by Bill “Riled Up“ ” O’Reilly as a devious carmelengo (chairman).
   
But no such luck. There’s already a sneaky altar boy type and crafty carmelengo, available: apple-cheeked priest Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor), the dead Pope’s pet laddie-buck, and one of the  most resourceful clerics since Bing Crosby’s Father Chuck ("Dial O for”) O’Malley sang “Toora-Loora-Loora“ and “Swingin‘ on a Star.” Father Pat has taken over operations, and is all set to make our jaws drop in the movie‘s goofiest sequence -- involving a bomb, a helicopter, a parachute and a square full of surly stem cell protestors and frantic Pope groupies.
       
Get the picture? Did I forget to mention Armin Mueller-Stahl as Cardinal Strauss, waltzing his way through the movie, making guttural utterances of doom? Yes -- and I also missed Danish heartthrob Thure Lindhardt as Chartrand, the young phenom of the Swiss Guards.  And we definitely have to add Rance Howard, Ron’s dad, often cast by his son, who here plays Cardinal Beck. (No more Fox News jokes, please.)
     
And what about the turn with Steve Franken -- the immortal Chatsworth Osborne Jr. of Dobie Gillis and the great drunken waiter of the Peter Sellers-Blake Edwards masterpiece The Party -- who here caps a career of dedicated tomfoolery by playing Cardinal Colbert. (No relation to Steve C.) Or the scene where the character based on the late Cardinal Spellman, played by the late Paul Lynde, shows up to demand that Angels and Demons be condemned along with The Miracle and Baby Doll, while secretly planning his own private, audience-participation performance of G. I. Joe at the Satyricon, played by 80 male hookers in the Catacombs. (No, I‘m just kidding. But only about that last one.)
     
Well, that’s about it, folks. Except to confess that Allan Cameron’s production design is fantastic,  Salvatore Totino’s cinematography is noirishly beautiful and the production credits are fabulous all around. But engaging guys like these, and Zimmer, Koepp and Goldsman, and the whole cast, and poor Ronny Howard (you should buy Frost/Nixon instead), is about as sensible as hiring Izhtak Perlman and Yo Yo Ma to play a medley of "Turkey in the Straw,” “Copacabana” and “The Pina Colada Song” -- in the Sistine Chapel. (You should check out all those clues on the ceiling.)
         
Remember when they made sensible, moving or amusing movies about the Catholic Church? Like Otto Preminger’s unfairly damned The Cardinal or Leo McCarey’s heart-cockle-warming The Bells of St. Mary’s? If God and the Devil made a video game together, it might have looked like Angels and Demons.  And I think, next time around with Dan Brown, Tom hanks should demand a contract that lets him stop chasing around for a minute or two and take time to fondle his leading lady‘s God Particle.
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