Fire at Will!'s Review

Male Stars - OK 2.5

Tom Hanks and Ewan McGregor are the indisputable stars, and they're both good enough when required to be. Hanks remains rather anonymous throughout in comparison to many of his previous roles, and perhaps this is due to inhabiting a character already written and familiar to readers. All in all, it's Tom Hanks but not the Tom Hanks he became known as from "Apollo 13", "Forrest Gump" or "Road to Perdition". McGregor does ham it up throughout the film, but his character is trying to do his best for the church, and the actor conveys anguish and an internal struggle better than most.

Female Stars - Bad 1.0

Ayelet Zurer (previously seen in "Munich") has perhaps the most unforgiving role in the film as the female partner of Robert Langdon. What is sad here is that the character's subplots and situations that defined her in the book have been discarded - leaving her as a shadow of what she should be. Zurer tries hard to make a performance out of a character that is badly written, but she can't save it.

Female Costars - Bad 1.0

Adjusted for score purposes - Zurer is the only female role in the entire film so actually leaving this as awful wouldn't hurt the general score.

Male Costars - OK 2.5

"Hamming" it up, a phrase often used in description of such films, doesn't begin to cover some of the support here. Stellan Skarsgard, as the suspicious and nefarious Swiss Guard commander, is set up as a blatant antagonist from the start, and the actor is almost pantomime-villain standard here. Armin Mueller-Stahl, as the cardinal in charge of the conclave, is just as guilty of this, with nearly every line he delivers deliberately ambigious as to his intentions but adjoined to a suspicious facial expression. Is he bad or good? You don't care after a while. Nikolaj Lie Kaas, as the Illuminati assassin, again has to deal with an abrupt change from the book, but he actually makes the character better as a studious, intellectual-looking murderer as opposed to Dan Brown's Muslim, slightly racist novel counterpart. Thure Lindhardt and Pierfranceso Favino, two fairly anonymous actors, get two fairly significant parts here as the sympathetic Swiss Guard officer and Roman policeman respectively, and despite not knowing either actor, I found both to be more realistic and believable than their more famous counterparts.

Direction - Good 3.0

Howard's ability to shoot action is not half as good as his proficiency with drama - unfortunately, this film depends on the former more than the latter. The expository scenes, which were actually required and interesting in "Da Vinci", are stripped to running conversations here, and Brown's over-explanatory writing is torn down to its bare minimum. Despite making the narrative move quicker, the film still ends up being almost three hours long, and it's a testament to Howard that this doesn't feel like a three hour movie. The action is thrilling, the revelations well made and the sense of urgency pervading everything never lets up.

Dialogue - OK 2.5

Brown's writing is not particularly literary at the best of times, but here Howard and his writers have learnt from the criticisms of the exposition in "Da Vinci". Hanks explains the situations whilst running or driving somewhere else - the action is not sacrificed, and as a result the film moves faster and the story retains its high points. This is probably one of the better aspects of the movie, other than the dubious and rather costly choice to destroy the character of Vittoria Vetra as she was represented on the page.

Music - Barely OK 2.0

Some of the themes retained from "Da Vinci" make it into this film, but this score is nothing on its predecessor's. I didn't notice it at all apart from some impressive choral arrangements, and even then I think it was deliberately quietened down to get across the important dialogue.

Visuals - Good 3.0

The visuals, particularly in the case of Rome and the Vatican, are fantastic. Whilst Howard was obviously not able to film in the Vatican itself, the mock-ups and reconstructions are so detailed as to be believable, whilst green-screen moments do actually appear better than what we've usually come to expect from movies. The eventual detonation of the anti-matter is actually strikingly brilliant - not only does it get across the awe of such a detonation, but the styling of it seems to reflect its reference as the "God particle".

Sex Innocent 1.0

Violence Fierce 2.0

Rudeness Salty 1.6

Circumstantial - Surreal 2.3

Biological - Surreal 2.3

Physical - Surreal 2.3