Growing up as I did when the big debacle concerning The Da
Vinci Code made headlines, I’ve probably got the same mental association with
Dan Brown films as the rest of the world: Convoluted mystery stories justified
by a business-casual approach to history. Of course, I’ve spent the years since
first watching Da Vinci and Angels & Demons playing a lot of Assassin’s
Creed, so fidelity to history and genuine science clearly isn’t an entertainment
factor for me… most days, at least. As such, I don’t take as much issue with
these films as the general consensus. Sure, they fall into some pretty
illogical pitfalls with alarming regularity, and main character Robert Langdon
can shift erratically from smartest man in the room to worst investigator ever,
but as a couple of potboiler mystery thrillers, they serve their purpose. Yes,
I realise how long I’ve spent lambasting Akiva Goldsman’s work, but the Dan
Brown adaptations are easily some of his most tolerable contributions. Since
Akiva has stepped away from the typewriter for this one, there’s nowhere to go
but up for this series… maybe?
The plot: Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) wakes up in a
hospital room in Florence, Italy. He has no memory of the last few days, but
apparently he must have done something noteworthy because he once again has
people who want to kill him. With the help of his attending doctor Sienna
(Felicity Jones), he has to recollect his actions that lead up to his
hospitalisation, as well as follow a puzzle trail left behind by scientist
Bertrand Zobrist (Ben Foster) that could lead to a deadly virus primed for
release.
Hanks has been out of Langdon’s shoes for seven years now,
but he fits back into them remarkably well, giving the usual level of
confidence for a person of his purportedly abilities. However, thanks to the
parameters of the plot, he also works with the displacement and general
confusion his character is under for the majority of the film. Jones is
probably the blandest of the sidekicks this series has shown us so far, but
credit where it’s due in that she works rather well with the developments she’s
given. Foster may be in the film far less than I would have liked, given how I’ve
taken a shine to him thanks to his recent output, but he still carries the
grandiose personality to make you believe that this is a guy who could convince
people that half the world needs to die. Omar Sy as a government agent working
on the case makes for a nice presence, Ana Ularu as this film’s pursuing
assassin is alright but she’s no Silas, and Irrfan Khan as the head of this
film’s shadowy conspiratorial organisation gives the role the obtuseness and
common sense it requires.
As I’ve not-so-subtly hinted at in the above paragraph, Dan
Brown isn’t exactly the most versatile author out there. Even with the absence
of Akiva Goldsman, this time having Angels & Demons co-writer David Koepp
go solo, this has pretty much the exact same narrative structure as the last
two films. We have a earth-shattering scheme connected to some facet of traditional
Christianity, a trail of clues tied into famous works of art, a shadowy
organisation setting the events of the story in motion, and the closest
confidante to the leads is revealed to be the main villain. It’s because of
this that the cold opening with Langdon in hospital is as effective as it is,
because it shows a marked departure from the series’ norm. Not that repetition is
bad in and of itself; just that when it’s this pervasive within a single
series, you can’t help but question why they would bother with this latest
iteration to begin with.
And then there’s the big conspiracy at the heart of the
story or, to be more accurate, the two
big conspiracies. One of which is related to Zobrist’s views on overpopulation
and how he found allies to help carry out his grand plan, and the other
involves The Consortium, a private security company specializing in “fabricated
realities” that helped fund Zobrist’s plans. As the two are linked together
through the narrative, they basically twist and twirl around each other to
create the story of the film… and even for Dan Brown, this is far-fetched. Don’t
get me wrong, it carries on the usual sins of man theme of the last two, as
well as furthering the trend of the grand schemes becoming more grounded in
reality the less involvement Goldsman has in the writer’s room. However, the
way this film tries (and fails) to juggle both of them throughout ends up
muddling what should the explosive conclusion to a trilogy that has already
seen mass conspiracy within the Catholic papacy, as well as discovering the
last descendent of Jesus himself. A race to stop a virus, aside from being
really damn similar to the chase after an antimatter container in Angels &
Demons, just fails to have the equal punch of those other stories.
Something else that hasn’t changed between films, and on a
positive note this time, director Ron Howard still knows how to stage scenes to
make them feel grand and immense… if somewhat incoherent. The man’s sense of
scale ends up clashing with returning cinematographer Salvatore Totino’s
apparent intent to give everyone a feeling of motion sickness. I get how some
action scenes benefit from the use of hand-held cameras, to match the frenetic
pace of what’s on screen, but the constantly shaking camera makes the action
more than a little disorienting. This film’s production codename was literally ‘Headache’,
and after watching it, I can easily see why. This is an extra shame because the
red-tinged hellfire imagery from the trailer? All hallucinations on Langdon’s part, and
I can’t even complain that much about the most visually enticing moments being
fictional even in-universe. The satanic imagery is very well-conveyed and ends
up adding a lot to Langdon’s own sense of disorientation, and it shows a more
thought-out integration of the classical art clues into the story itself.
All in all, even for a series that I’ve taken a bit of a
liking to, this is a pretty weaksauce offering. The acting is still solid, the
visuals are stunning and it feels like the most accessible of the series thanks
to its lack of theological targeting, but the story is not only incredibly
muddled, it also manages to under-deliver for a series that has made its mark
with gargantuan conspiracy theorizing. Maybe it’s because this film’s attempt
to become somewhat less controversial, by refraining from anti-Catholicism and
going with an evil plot that is about as Bond villain as you can get, it has
lost its sense of identity and grandeur that made Da Vinci Code and Angels
& Demons at least watchable.
No comments:
Post a Comment