Now that director Ron Howard isn't as worried about faithfully adapting a Dan Brown bestseller to please a legion of devoted readers, and knows that a big-budget mystery wrapped in controversial theological revisionism can find a mass audience (The Da Vinci Code was a global box office hit in 2006), he has the freedom to turn Angels & Demons into a genuine thriller. With most of the action condensed into one all-important day, Howard gives Angels the verve and immediacy the ossified Code lacked, and despite its hot-button premise (science versus God), the script from David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman looks at the events surrounding the election of a new Pope and reveals something akin to a palace coup at the Vatican, not a direct challenge to the Roman Catholic faith.

There's something pleasantly retro about these Robert Langdon religious mysteries, which tap into the same vein as an Indiana Jones or National Treasure movie, casting tweedy academics as action heroes determined to unearth long-buried secrets. But the stoic Langdon (Tom Hanks) is no gung-ho adventurer. Erudite and enigmatic, this symbolist would rather quietly tease out an age-old riddle than lead the charge to find the kidnapper who threatens to kill four Cardinals and annihilate the Holy See in a blaze of light. Yet that's precisely the position he finds himself in, as no one seems better equipped to interpret the coded messages from a resurgent Illuminati, once a society of progressive scientists who clashed with the Church's strict doctrine.

Howard has an old Hollywood attitude about merging fact with fiction for dramatic effect, and has been handsomely rewarded for it (the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind). He's at ease with portraying Brown's blend of history and invention, resting Angels & Demons squarely on the shoulders of Hanks, who can hold an audience's attention and empathy even when working solo (Cast Away). With Hanks embodying Langdon as an unbiased keeper of arcane knowledge, someone whose life revolves around his intellectual pursuits, Brown's tale comes off with the sheen of veracity. So again, The Da Vinci Code team court controversy by unironically presenting their hero uncovering the dark secrets of the Catholic Church with an outrageous plotline that's more truthiness than reality.

But alas, there's no Stephen Colbert around to deflate pomposity while providing the perspective of a contemporary Catholic. Brown's Old World saga is decidedly Eurocentric, harking back to Vatican intrigues when its influence (political and religious) was felt throughout the Western world. Howard turns Angels & Demons into Shakespearean pulp, portraying a cloistered society fighting off the encroachment of a modern world that worships technology. That secular menace is epitomized by the Hadron Collider in neighboring Switzerland, where physicist Dr. Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) and her mentor (a conflicted priest) are trying to isolate "the God particle" when a canister of their highly-volatile antimatter is stolen by the Illuminati, who use it to threaten Vatican City.

The reluctant Langdon and the resourceful Vetra meet in the office of the cynical Commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgård), who's unconvinced that the presence of either is required or even advisable. As everyone focuses on the kidnapped Cardinals (complicated by a jurisdictional pissing contest between Richter's Swiss Guard, the Vatican Police, and the Carabinieri in Rome), the film finds its footing. The dubious science, the historical tinkering, the religious redrafting, they all take a back seat to a series of machinations that are Machiavellian in their audacity and baroqueness. When seen as an intrigue rather than an assault, Angels & Demons becomes as enjoyably ludicrous as a Bond film, detailing a powerplay that uses the insularity of the Vatican community against itself.

Within the inner sanctum, two paths for the Church's future are embodied in the forceful traditionalist Cardinal Strauss (Armin Mueller-Stahl, who imbues this ecclesiastical dignitary with deep intelligence and rigid compassion, as he did in The Third Miracle), and rising star Father Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor). Literally the son of Il Papa (he was adopted as a boy by the recently deceased Pope), and as much heir apparent as Camerlengo (Vatican administrator), McKenna appears to signify a new transparency for the notoriously cloaked Holy See. But it's Strauss who's in charge behind closed doors, influencing the Sacred College even with the four preferiti (Cardinals most likely to be elected the next Holy Father) missing and a host of mysterious forces swirling around them.

The relentless forward motion of the narrative — the ticking clock effect that makes 2 hours and 20 minutes fly by — keeps the portentous Angels & Demons from getting stuck in its own pretentiousness, and even allows for a few revealing moments. The boyish glee that crosses Langdon's glum face when he finally accesses a Galileo text locked up in the hermetically sealed Vatican Archives reveals the treasure hunter beneath the carefully maintained façade of scholarly distance. Even as he's dispensing the most ruthless of Illuminati dictated torments, the assassin played by Nikolaj Lie Kaas (as in Code, the killer is revealed early) has a ruthless pride in his work, treating interference by law enforcement as an annoying impediment to a job properly done.

Howard has taken Brown's first Langdon novel and successfully positioned it as a sequel to The Da Vinci Code, giving it a looser and more optimistic feel but maintaining the author's culture of conspiracy. In what would certainly horrify the crusading journalist Howard canonized in Frost/Nixon, this film repeatedly shows the television news corps in St. Peter's Square dutifully repeating the skillful spin and outright misinformation provided by the Holy See to their global audience without even the most basic independent research. In Angels & Demons, very few people see beyond what they want to see, or question what they dearly believe. It's just the kind of stagnation that perpetuates the status quo, and guarantees that the more things change, the more they stay the same.

© 2009, Serena Donadoni. All rights reserved.

Director: Ron Howard | Writers: David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman | Adapted from the novel Angels & Demons by Dan Brown | Cinematography: Salvatore Totino | Music: Hans Zimmer | Production Design: Allan Cameron | Costume Design: Daniel Orlandi | Editing: Dan Hanley and Mike Hill | Visual Effects Supervisor: Angus Bickerton | Producers: John Calley, Brian Grazer and Ron Howard | Released by Columbia Pictures | Running time: 140 minutes | Rated PG-13

Cast: Tom Hanks (Professor Robert Langdon), Ewan McGregor (Father Patrick McKenna, Il Camerlengo), Ayelet Zurer (Doctor Vittoria Vetra), Armin Mueller-Stahl (Cardinal Strauss), Cosimo Fusco (Father Simenon), Stellan Skarsgård (Commander Richter), Thure Lindhardt (Chartrand), Pierfrancesco Favino (Inspector Ernesto Olivetti), David Pasquesi (Claudio Vincenzi), Victor Alfieri (Lieutenant Valenti), Franklin Amobi (Cardinal Lamasse), Curt Lowens (Cardinal Ebner), Bob Yerkes (Cardinal Guidera), Marco Fiorini (Cardinal Baggia), Carmen Argenziano (Father Silvano Bentivolglio), Howard Mungo (Cardinal Yoruba), Rance Howard (Cardinal Beck), Steve Franken (Cardinal Colbert), Gino Conforti (Cardinal Pugini), Elya Baskin (Cardinal Petrov), Anna Katarina (Docent), and Nikolaj Lie Kaas (Assassin).