“ANGELS & DEMONS”
Starring Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer
Released: May 15, 2009

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Fantastic compared to 'The Da Vinci Code,' but still not without its problems.

NOVELIST DAN BROWN'S epic religious-themed mysteries may be fanatical and a tricky mix of fact and total fiction, but it’s hard to deny that they’re a whole lot of fun.

In 2003's "The Da Vinci Code," we followed Harvard professor and symbologist Robert Langdon as he traipsed around Europe, pursuing clues leading to the resting place of Jesus' supposed girlfriend, Mary Magdelene, aka (at least for the purposes of the story) the Holy Grail.

It was an excellent read when not taken too seriously, but the 2006 movie, starring Tom Hanks as Langdon, was pretty much a massive failure, mostly due to way too much explaining and Hanks' hair.

As a result, hopes weren't too high for the sequel — the film adaptation of what was actually a prequel, 2000's "Angels & Demons."

Now, Langdon's been called to the Vatican, the center of the Catholic religion, to assist with a small crisis.

The pope has just died, but the preferiti — the four cardinals with the highest chances of becoming the next pope — have been kidnapped and a message has been sent back to the Vatican, indicating that beginning at 8 on some specific night, one of them will be murdered, and then another murder will occur every hour after that until midnight, when all of Vatican City will be demolished in an explosion of antimatter.

Langdon's initial purpose is to determine the significance of an image that comes with the message. It's an ambigram of the word "Illuminati," meaning that the word looks the same no matter which way you turn it.

However, since that's kind of boring, Langdon ends up going on a wild goose chase all over Rome in search of the missing cardinals, their kidnapper/potential killer, and a really really scary bomb.

Compared to "The Da Vinci Code," "Angels & Demons" is a true cinematic masterpiece, and would be a pretty good movie in and of itself if it weren't for one thing: time stamps. When a subtitle appears in a movie that isn't entirely subtitled, whatever information that subtitle contains becomes somehow significant, or at least the viewer is bound to pay close attention to it.

The story of this film is very time sensitive — every hour, on the hour, a cardinal dies, each one in a separate location somewhere in Rome.

Each location holds a clue to the spot of the next murder, so basically Langdon, a random pretty physicist named Vittoria (Ayelet Zurer), and a team of Vatican City police have only an hour to decipher each clue in order to save any cardinals, and every few minutes, some text on screen lets us know how much time is left.

So yeah, time is very important. But, the more we're alerted to what time it is, the more we're going to pay attention to how completely improbable it is for everything that's happening to happen in a certain amount of time.

At 9:34, Langdon enters the Vatican archives, then gets trapped in a vacuum-tight room when the power goes out, so he passes out from lack of oxygen, then he drives all the way across Rome but still manages to make it to some random church at 9:58. I know Europeans drive kind of fast, but that just seems ridiculous.

I mean, obviously this story is not real, as is indicated by the fact that you apparently can't contain antimatter in a pocket-sized cylinder, but they could have at least tried a little bit harder.

The antimatter is part of an experiment being conducted by Vittoria in some lab in Sweden or Norway or somewhere, and so she is also summoned by the Vatican to help with this somehow.

Mostly she gets to tell everyone that when the battery on that magnetic cylinder dies, then everyone in Vatican City will die too, and then she assists Langdon by spurting out little bits of art and religious history that there's absolutely no reason for her to know.

She's not even there as a romantic interest for Langdon. She does nothing, and is pointless. But what would a movie do without a pretty girl?

This movie isn't really bad; it's just frustrating because it's so very close to being excellent and just falls a little short. While it's a huge improvement on "The Da Vinci Code," which tried too hard to explain everything, director Ron Howard still hasn't let up quite enough. There's still a bit too much there, like his eyes are a little bigger than his stomach.

That said, the film isn't without its merits. Ewan McGregor is fantastic as the Camerlengo, and Tom Hanks, with a suitable haircut, is a very good Robert Langdon.

The story is interesting, though to really get into it requires a bit of a stretch of the imagination. You mostly just have to completely ignore what time the movie says it is and focus on the acting, the storytelling, and the architecture.

However, if you are squeamish, you might not want to focus too hard. Gouged eyeballs and tortured priests make for a few rather horrific sights.

"Angels & Demons" is currently playing at the Goodrich Savoy 16, 232 W. Burwash, Savoy, and the Beverly 18, 910 Meijers Drive, Champaign.

"Angels & Demons" AT A GLANCE

• Starring: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgard
• Directed by: Ron Howard
• Written by: David Koepp, Akiva Goldsman, Dan Brown (novel)
• Genre: Crime, Drama, Mystery, Thriller
• Rated: PG-13
• Runtime: 138 min.
• Release date: May 15, 2009
• Summary (from IMDb): Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon works to solve a murder and prevent a terrorist act against the Vatican.