With its shots of slow-roasting clergymen, Omen-like soundtrack of shrieking singers and frantic talk of the true conspiracy theorist’s all-time favourite posse — yee-ah, we’re talking Illuminati, baby! — Angels & Demons is Catholic-baiting hokum of the highest order. And where The Da Vinci Code, director Ron Howard and star Tom Hanks’ first encounter with the thrillers of Dan Brown, was painfully lugubrious due to its characters’ constant need to yammer huge chunks of exposition at each other, the follow-up has all the velocity this nonsense requires thanks to a clever array of ticking-clock scenarios and Howard’s deft handling of the big suspense sequences.
Keeping the action tightly centred on the Holy See also improves the pacing, which is important given the ridiculousness of the movie’s contents. Relieved of the Chad Kroeger–esque hairstyle he sported in the first outing, Hanks is on sturdy form here as Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon comes to the aid of his old adversaries at the Vatican after the Illuminati — the secret society of science-first renegades that the church tried to wipe out in the 17th century — takes advantage of the chaos surrounding the Pope’s death to exact some payback. A path marked by Bernini sculptures, a shadowy Euro assassin and an anti-matter bomb are just three of the many devices used to keep it all barrelling along. Only a few spurious pleas to reconcile the warring camps of science and religion gum up the works: the real world has no place here. I say bring on the flaming cardinals.