Ron Howard may have made a giant bore out of Dan Brown‘s mega-bestseller The Da Vinci Code, and saddled Tom Hanks with one weird haircut to boot, but I’m pleased to say he seems to have learned his lesson with this nicely energized and entertaining follow-up.
Based on Brown’s prequel to Da Vinci, but positioned here as a sequel, it sees a slimmed-down Hanks using his symbology expertise to help the Vatican track down four kidnapped candidates for the Papacy before they’re summarily executed and the city is blown to bits by some stolen antimatter.
The film positively rockets along compared to its predecessor. Hanks spouts reams of religious exposition via West Wing-style walk-and-talk and rushes nonstop around Rome with a Swiss physicist (Ayelet Zurer) instead of just sitting around yakking. Howard swirls his camera around the action and blows up cars and helicopters and even lets Hanks fire a gun.
The characters also seem impatient to keep things moving. At one point Hanks asks for a map. “I can use it now!” he adds but a few seconds later. At another point the Vatican priest (Ewan McGregor) who’s temporarily in charge of the place asks Hanks just how fast he can find the next church. And later a nimble assassin (Nikolaj Lie Kaas) takes out Italian cops in efficient fashion.
Howard amps up the violence, too. Besides being shot, people are burned alive, branded and gnawed on by rats. Hanks himself almost suffocates, and in another scene gets blood spurted onto his face as Zurer tries to give a dying priest CPR. And then there’s the antimatter angle, which allows for a bit of high-tech among the musty surroundings, including the cool sight of CERN’s Large Hadron Collider.
As such the story also tangles with the whole science vs. religion debate, from Vatican officials scoffing at the dubbing of anti-matter as “the God particle” to the big speech McGregor gives during conclave. None of it bothered me, since I have no religious affiliation, but I imagine it will drive some people nuts.
I would have preferred, though, that screenwriters David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman made Hanks’ on-the-fly explanations less dense, and the actors here, including Stellan Skarsgard, don’t play actual characters so much as mouthpieces to advance the plot. As it is, McGregor makes the best and most interesting impression, while Hanks gets a few funny moments and the pretty Zurer adds a bit of fire.
The plot’s the point with this one, anyway, a religious race-the-clock set-up dreamed up by Brown that Howard enhances to thrilling effect through skillful use of editing and lighting, Hans Zimmer‘s score and some impressive visual effects that give us a true bang for our buck. As for Hanks’ hair, well, I guess that’ll do, Tom’s hairdresser, that’ll do. – [DVD] [Blu-Ray]
Mystery/Thriller
Rated PG-13
DVD Release Date: 11/24/09
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