Decent...well, not decent, but not bad, although....

Rating: 5/10 (19 May 2009)

This is terribly silly material mounted as though it was a revelation from some high-browed expose of the Catholic Church, I guess. The Church's history is certainly full of colorful, tawdry, lurid stories that really don't need a layer of "symbolology" veneered over it. There's very tight, well-directed movie making here, but it's all pretty silly when we're supposed to gasp that a statue's arrow is pointing in some direction to another statue that's pointing in another direction, and there's a big jug of anti-matter (science is poorly used here) boiling somewhere about to go off.
Tom Hanks needs to write this one off. I think he's a rare talent, but intellectual posturing isn't encompassed in those talents. The rest of the cast (save Ewan McGregor who can't wait to pull out the stops and chew the marble pillars...he does...have patience, he does) is miles above the material, as is the director and everyone else involved.
I won't say this is a good popcorn movie (like "National Treasure" or "The Mummy" installments which are really its companions) because it has pretensions far above that. Those aren't really made clear, but it's mounted like a million bucks, yet it's only drivel.
Ron Brown's books are written like movie scripts. Too bad that Hollywood thought Brown had something serious to say. It's above anything in "Star Trek"...and in fact there are comparisons. Perhaps Ron Howard should try his turn with the new cast of the Enterprise. That might produce a really fine blockbuster.