Three years after the Dan Brown novel "The Da Vinci Code" appeared as a film which took a staggering $760 million, another of his books receives the large screen treatment. Although Brown wrote "Angels & Demons" first, the film version represents this story, which is sympathetic to the Catholic Church, as following "The Da Vinci Code" which was seen as hostile to the Church. Whatever the difference in stance towards Catholicism, Brown's work is always terribly formulaic: a twisting plot set over a matter of hours, lots of symbols and signs, considerable running, much desecration of the flesh, the counterbalancing of religion and science, minimal characterisation, and changing perception of key characters. This time it's all cardinals, cathedrals, crypts and catacombs plus a camerlengo scattered over central Rome and the Vatican.
Again Tom Hanks as the Harvard symbologist does his best with a wooden script (but a better haircut) - at least "Angels & Demons" is less wordy than "The Da Vinci Code". Again there is only one female character - this time Italian physicist Vittoria Vetra (Israeli actress Ayelet Zurer). Scottish Ewan McGregor (who struggles to affect a Northern Irish accent), German Armin Mueller-Stahl and Swedish Stellan Skarsgård each play Vatican officials who may be an angel or a demon. It's hard to work out which is the greatest threat: the Illuminati, an anti-matter bomb or the implausibilities of the plot. Papal bull or curate's egg? - you decide. It's a miracle that it works at all, but if you have faith, I confess that it's really quite an entertaining piece of hokum.
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