Complete deviation from the book...disappointing re-arrangement of story line

Rating: 4/10 (28 November 2009)

I read the book before watching the movie. The movie pales in comparison to the book.
The story was completely changed. Some characters were eliminated or renamed.
For instance, the book was all about the "conflict" between science and religion represented as a conflict between CERN and the Catholic Church. The movie contains none of this.
Maximillian Kohler, the director of CERN, is replaced by Commandante Richter as the person who confronts the Camerlengo.
In the book all four Cardinals die, in the movie, the last one survives.
In the book the assassin is a blood hungry dark-skinned Arabic person, who fights with Robert Langdon on three occasions; all those scenes were removed and the killer was replaced with a Caucasian man that seemed to exhibit some type of assassin's honor. In the book, Robert Langdon and Victoria kill the assassin; in the movie he is killed by a car explosion.
The heart of the story, Leonardo Vetra, is non-existent in the movie and Victoria Vetra, a powerhouse in the book, has a meaningless role in the movie; not to mention the fact that the build up to the Camerlengo being the arch villain is presented poorly in the movie.
Many interesting philosophical discussions were left out of the movie.
The comic effect of the cocky BBC reporter Gunther Glick was completely removed and more importantly the provocative idea of the dead Pope having fathered a child through artificial insemination was omitted; that idea was shocking and made the book very worthy in my view.
All in all, the book is much more riveting that the movie. You might enjoy the movie, if you don't read the book.