The Bernini Code

Rating: 5/10 (14 May 2009)

A lead character sporting a better hairdo doesn't translate to a better conspiracy theory film as proved by "Angels & Demons", the follow-up to the ludicruous "The Da Vinci Code", where Tom Hanks reprises his role as the renowned symbologist in a race against time to follow clues and solve riddles to prevent a catastrophe from happening. Based from the first novel by Dan Brown to feature Harvard Professor of Symbology Robert Langdon (an Indiana Jones clone with less charisma), Ron Howard's second go at pseudo-erudite actioner succeeds only insofar as being consistent with its cinematic predecessor's mediocrity, with the age-old science-versus-religion theme depthlessly glanced at in lieu of the turgid plot and uninspiring chase scenes around the churches of Rome and Vatican City.
Actually a prequel of "The Da Vinci Code" novel, the events in "Angels & Demons" is set after the events of the 2006 blockbuster where Langdon, now in antagonism with the Catholic Church following his Parisian saga, finds himself in the middle of another predicament when the Vatican summons him to help them in locating the whereabouts of the Illuminati, a supposedly mythical group of freethinkers that has vanished centuries ago but has apparently re-emerged shortly after the Pope's death to murder the four would-be successors to the Papacy, and blow up Vatican City in the process using an antimatter bomb stolen from the elite science lab CERN in Switzerland. With her is the obligatory female sidekick Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), a scientist who worked on the bomb, and together they perfunctorily locate Bernini statues among the churches in the vicinity to save the Church from an old enemy.
Lecturing and pontificating, "Angels & Demons"' greatest fault nevertheless is not its ambivalence towards its contrasting themes -- despite being dealt so clumsily -- but in its underwhelming routine setpieces, as exemplified by its riddles so cursorily presented and hastily solved that they appear less the plot's selling point than mere reconsiderations to an otherwise by-the-numbers narrative that seems to take longer to go its obvious twist. Maybe Dan Brown has seen way too many classical art.