A good mystery movie

Rating: 8/10 (18 May 2011)

"Robert Langdon" (Tom Hanks) is back, and he has only a few hours to solve a mystery to save thousands of Catholic faithful, and top candidates for role of pope, before an incident which will kill them all as they await the announcement of who the new leader of the church will be.
Now, "Langdon", along with a woman who helped create antimatter in a lab, must figure out the clues and save the faithful of the world's largest church.
Let me say first that this is much better than the original movie, which I barely remember seeing. You really don't need to read the novel that the movie is based upon to enjoy it.
There are some really good performances in this film, especially from Hanks, who proved himself as a solid leading man many times. Here, he really shines as a leading man.
There is some serious problems with character development with supporting characters, especially "Dr. Vittoria Vetra" (Ayelet Zurer), whose antimatter is being used as a weapon, and "Camerlengo Patrick McKenna" (Ewan McGregor), who turns an interesting plot twist that I never expected at the end, but isn't seen as much as I would like.
Another problem with this movie is that it is obvious that they opted for green screen for many scenes depicting Roman Catholic churches within Rome's city limits (the church refused to allow the movie to be filmed at the locations since the church declared the book offensive to the church). A barely trained eye (which I have since I learned TV production back in high school) could see the actors were in front of a green screen. These effects will become noticeable to the untrained eye as the film ages, and special effects advance.
One thing this movie does pretty well is that it gives very little time for the audience to breathe between action and plot advancing scenes. You get excited as "Langdon" and "Vetra" get closer to the murderer(s) as they discover new clues.
Despite not being able to shoot on location, and the threat of a strike at the time, Ron Howard did a great job in the director's chair as usual. He was able to use interesting camera angles to help tell the story nicely.
I can't really say I noticed the soundtrack of the movie, since I barely pay attention to instrumentals since that's not my style I listen to. I do notice that it helped the scenes, and in this movie it did.
If you see this on any of the movie channels like HBO, or on Netflix, check this one out.