Angels & Demons (2009)

It doesn't get as muddled in the details as its predecessor The Da Vinci Code, but the end results are still pretty uneven. One thing I noticed fairly early and irked me is that the characters are constantly talking "at" each other and not "to" each other. To clarify, it never feels as if anyone is having a genuine conversation. Everything spoken (typically shouted) is constantly driving the plot forward endlessly, there's never moments of pause or reflection. I can understand that Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is a Harvard professor, and thus, understandably quite brilliant. How come everyone else is so smart? One of his partners, running around Rome from one plot device to the next, is Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer). Vetra is a scientist, yet, somehow without clear explanation during the proceedings she appears as nearly Langdon's equal in his own field (symbols), helping him translate Latin, extrapolate on theological riddles, etc. Even it seems the local security force doubles as art historians, driving from one sculpture to the next as if adrenaline junkie taxi drivers.

Once the ball gets rolling on the suspense portion of the film, it is fairly entertaining and compelling save you don't get bogged down in all religious drudgery. Its never riveting but fairly innocuous entertainment.

Nightwatch (1997)

Nightwatch (1997) is a critical misfire. My biggest issue stems from there not being a single likeable character. Ewan McGregor plays Martin Bells, a law student who takes a job as a night watchman at a morgue. Ewan is one-dimensional, eating up scenes gawking, smoking nervously, and edgily jumping at loud bumps in the night while on duty. Josh Brolin plays James Gallman, Martin’s best friend, and while its one of the film’s better performances, his character James is a misogynistic, arrogant, loose canon who we never get a real grip on. Then there’s Katherine (Patricia Arquette), Martin’s girlfriend, whom came off as a mere afterthought to the writers, having no development and generally used to sigh agitatedly at the ongoing mess her boyfriend is finding himself in.

Nick Nolte’s Inspector Thomas Cray is quiet and creepy; as the plot unravels he becomes increasingly more unsettling to watch. I did enjoy Brad Dourif as the agitated Duty Doctor, whenever Martin gets spooked, its his duty to trudge down to the morgue to investigate, where he ultimately pegs Martin as a anxiety-riddled college kid in need of meds, which he’ll happily provide out of his secret stash.

The story itself is of a serial killer, who after murdering his victims, rapes them, usually committing sodomy and cutting out their eyes. Martin, presumably not guilty of anything more than having a poor choice of companions, is implicated in the murders. The plot crashes through a series of rote devices, its mysteries not very mysterious, its horror coming from clumsy filmmaking more than anything else.