Angels & Demons (Two-Disc Extended Edition) |  | Director: Ron Howard
Actors: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgård, Pierfrancesco Favino
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $36.95
Buy New: $21.49
as of 11/24/2009 20:26 CST details
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Rating:  23 reviews
Sales Rank: 102
Format: AC-3, Closed-captioned, Color, Dolby, Dubbed, DVD, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
Languages: English (Subtitled), French (Subtitled), English (Original Language), French (Dubbed)
Rating: Unrated
Region: 99
Number Of Discs: 2
Running Time: 138 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.3
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.4 x 0.7
UPC: 043396326309
EAN: 0043396326309
ASIN: B002O5M4T4
Theatrical Release Date: 2009
Release Date: November 24, 2009 (New: Today)
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Amazon.com
If the devil is in the details, there's a lot of wicked fun in Angels & Demons, the sequel (originally a prequel) to The Da Vinci Code. Director Ron Howard delivers edge-of-your-pew thrills all over the Vatican, the City of Rome, and the deepest, dankest catacombs. Tom Hanks is dependably watchable in his reprised role as Professor Robert Langdon, summoned urgently to Rome on a matter of utmost urgency--which happens to coincide with the death of the Pope, meaning the Vatican is teeming with cardinals and Rome is teeming with the faithful. A religious offshoot group, calling themselves the Illuminati, which protested the Catholic Church's prosecution of scientists 400 years ago, has resurfaced and is making extreme, and gruesome, terrorist demands. The film zooms around the city, as Langdon follows clues embedded in art, architecture, and the very bone structure of the Vatican. The cast is terrific, including Ewan McGregor, who is memorable as a young protégé of the late pontiff, and who seems to challenge the common wisdom of the Conclave just by being 40 years younger than his fellows when he lectures for church reform. Stellan Skarsgard is excellent as a gruff commander of the Swiss Guard, who may or may not have thrown in with the Illuminati. But the real star of the film is Rome, and its High Church gorgeousness, with lush cinematography by Salvatore Totino, who renders the real sky above the Vatican, in a cataclysmic event, with the detail and majesty of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. --A.T. Hurley
Stills from Angels & Demons (click for larger image)
Description
In Ron Howard's thrilling follow-up to The Da Vinci Code, expert symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) follows ancient clues on a heart-racing hunt through Rome to find the four Cardinals kidnapped by the deadly secret society, the Illuminati. With the Cardinals' lives on the line, and the Camerlengo (Ewan McGregor) desperate for help, Langdon embarks on a nonstop, action-packed race through sealed crypts, dangerous catacombs, and the most secretive vault on Earth!
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| Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
 Not a direct copy of the book...but still great! November 25, 2009
Shannon N. Booth (Columbus, OH)
I LOVE the book! I thought I would be dissapointed with the movie considering the other reviews. No, the movie did not follow the book and some of the characters are missing or different. However, this movie was great. The main storyline is still there and it makes a good partner to the book. I was much more satisfied with this book adaptation than I was with the Davinci Code adaptation. If you loved the book, I think you will thoroughly enjoy this movie. I love how it tied into Davinci Code with the score. For all of those who complain that the book is so much better....well of course, the book is always better because you form the movie in your mind. That being said...This movie is great!
Brown knows symbols, Sony knows Blu, Hanks knows Langdon November 24, 2009
A. Dent (Minas Anor, GD)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Very briefly, I would like to begin by addressing some of the claims made about this movie in some of the more negative reviews.
Disappointment was expressed because the movie does not closely follow the book. This happens to be true. For the sake of movie-making, Dan Brown's book was not followed to the letter or even closely. However, it may be worth knowing that Dan Brown is the movie's executive producer and he absolutely approved all the major plot changes and, in fact, he confesses of actually suggesting some of the major changes. Perhaps those who read the book should treat the movie as work 'related' to the book but not THE book illustrated. It's still Dan Brown's work but this is cinematography that was inspired by his book, to be appreciated and enjoyed as a movie.
The other claim was that the book was somehow anti-Christian or anti-Catholic. I am unable to confirm this. I will not reveal the plot by providing substantial details but the movie concludes in a way the suggests respect for religious faith and the Catholic church, in fact, comes out looking pretty good.
Angels & Demons, besides being a feast to the eyes, it succeeds in arousing the viewer's curiosity in more than one area and, I'm sure, most who watched the movie and may find themselves in Rome and at the Vatican are more likely than not to actually look for some of the landmarks featured in Angels & Demons.
When it comes to acting Tom Hanks does not disappoint as Robert Langdon but Ewan McGregor lacks the gravitas we would expect from an acting Pope. Everyone else does the job but I didn't see any Oscar-quality performances and didn't expect to.
The special effects - when it comes the recreation of St. Peter Square and parts of the Vatican - are short of amazing. Like I said, the movie is a feast to the eyes and, for all intents and purposes, what you see is always Rome and the Vatican, even when the cameras were filming some California parking lot.
PACKAGING AND PRESENTATION
Sony is totally throwing the kitchen sink at us when it comes to this Blu edition. As the Blu standard bearer and main promoter, they want to show us what Blu can do to make our lives a little more interesting. Everything that you can think of when it comes to Blu-ray and more 'is in there'.
Starting with the Blu case, it's not the cheap, perforated, almost falling apart kind that some of the lesser editions are using now.
The decision to include both the theatrical version AND the extended cut on the same disc is responsible for this being a 3-disc set with a second disk carrying the special features and a third dedicated to the digital copies.
Technically speaking, the picture is, of course, 1080p and the two available sound tracks are both DTS-HD Master Audio in English and French. Surprisingly, the bonus features are shot in high-def as well with 2.0 stereo for the soundtrack.
SPECIAL FEATURES - BLU-RAY
Besides BD-Live, a number of interesting Blu-specific features are available with this release.
The Path of Illumination emulates a trail through Rome, following Robert Langdon's through 5 Roman landmarks. It has high visuals, interviews, footage from each location, even a dictionary where dozens of terms are explained. Anyone passing through Rome could walk the path with the Path of Illumination feature serving as a travel guide.
CineChat is another Sony attempt to promote more interactivity. It allows those watching the movie to organize themselves into a viewing party and actually have their chats displayed on-screen as the movie is playing.
The Movie-IQ option is a BD-Live powered option. It checks some online database and provides up-to-date information about the movie while watching the movie. Pretty cool actually, especially considering that this is not information 'burned' into the disc and it is updated, at least in theory if not in practice.
The digital copy, if this can go under Blu-ray specific features, is available for the PC, PSP (via PS3), Mac and iPod. Expires on 2/12/2010.
THE OTHER EXTRAS
Not as interactive as the BD-specific ones, they are also shot in hi-def for the Blu version, there are lots of shorts about the 'making of', actors, special effects, as expected. The featurette titled 'Writing Angels & Demons' should be of special interest because it's there where Dan Brown confesses to his specific agreement and cooperation on altering the story. Another interesting extra is on the CERN. Finally, we actually get to see and hear the real-life John Langdon, the person who served as the inspiration for the Robert Langdon character - he specializes in 'ambiagrams', of course.
MY RATING
I found this movie to be entertaining and to carry sufficient 'substance' to merit watching maybe more than once. The quality of the Blu rendition is nothing short of exquisite and the extras, both Blu-specific and the regular ones are worth watching and interacting with.
Angels & Demons is a keeper and, as a work of entertainment, it's a 5-star in my book.
Angels and Demons November 24, 2009
Carlos E. Velasquez
Angels and Demons - Columbia Pictures
Dan Brown is flying high these days. His novels are hot property in Hollywood, even before they are written. But, the fact is that the man can indeed produce great suspense literature - if it qualifies for that --, the one that can translate well into films, such as his incredibly popular "The Da Vinci Code." "Angels and Demons," I am happy to say, follows that tradition. It delivers great, smart entertainment, the one that you go to the movies for.
The film starts at the Vatican, just when it is announced that the Pope has just died. Simultaneously, we are transported to a laboratory known as the Large Hadron Collider, in Geneva, Switzerland, where scientists are about to successfully launch an important experiment which will generate antimatter. Unfortunately, once the antimatter is produced, one of the scientists handling this valuable product is assassinated and the antimatter is stolen. Enter Harvard's Prof. Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a renowned authority of symbols. He is informed by a Vatican cop that four priests - the apparent finalists to replace the Pope -- were kidnapped and that the Vatican's police was requesting his help, because the kidnapper(s) left a symbol of the Illuminati at the scenes of the crimes. Once in the Vatican, Langdom teams up with Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), an Italian physicist who was working with the antimatter experiments at the time it was stolen. They will try to put the puzzle that ties the antimatter and the Illuminati together. By doing so, they will realize, the hard way, that this is a dangerous game, in which science collides with religion and the Vatican's internal politics..
Some fans of Dan Brown's novels have criticized the adaptations of his work to the big screen -- "Angels and Demons" not being the exception --, and they may have a point. That's the danger of reading a book and expecting too much from Hollywood. However, having not read the book, I found this film to be highly provocative and intriguing, and I truly enjoyed it. In fact, I can't wait to see the installment of Brown's next book, "The Lost Symbol." I just hope that Hanks returns as Langdon and Ron Howard as its director. The formidable cast includes Ewan McGregor, Stellan Skarsgard, and Armin Mueller-Stahl. The DVD is loaded with extras, such as the mini documentaries "Rome was not built in a day," "Writing Angles and Demons," "Characters in search of the True Story," and more. (USA, 2009, color, 138 min plus additional material).
Reviewed by Eric Gonzalez on November 23, 2009 for [...]
 Huge improvement from the book November 23, 2009
M. Prevette
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The original novel, which began as a silly but fun pot-boiler, concluded with the absolute worst ending I may have ever read - just stunningly bad, one of the "WFT???????" endings, which, thankfully, has been changed for the movie to something a bit easier to believe.
I can understand people being disappointed in some huge changes from the book, but they're all for the better. The entire super-duper light speed jet was a howler, and Langdon surviving a fall from a helicopter...well the less said, the better. Brown isn't the most elegant of writers, a few years back on a 24 layover in Dubai I tried to read DaVinci Code and gave up, the hilarious use of exclamation points didn't help, and AGAIN in his newest Langdon adventure , he uses the same plot device he's used in every novel - a mysterious ( at times disfigured in some manner) assassin drives the plot, taking out everyone who can provide information and putting our hero in danger - come on Brown, this is what...the 4th, 5th time you've done this?
But yes overall the book was fun, if stupefying with it's ludicrous climax, and the Angels and Demons movie makes huge improvements that streamlined and clarified the plot to a great deal.
 Terrible Movie November 22, 2009
J. R. Cordova (So Cal)
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
Maybe they should have read the book before they made the movie! The book is great but the movie doesn't hold true to the book at all and was very disappointing.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 23
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