Of merging religion and science

Rating: 5/10 (12 December 2011)

The Roman Catholic Church is mourning the sudden death of the Pope. While there is mourning happening at the Vatican City, it is also preparing for the papal conclave which will elect on who will be the next Pope. Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) assumes the temporary control of the Vatican while thousands have been pouring into Saint Peter's Square, waiting for the vote.
Meanwhile at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN), Dr. Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), Father Silvano Bentivoglio (Carmen Argenziano) and their colleagues are initiating the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) and create in three vials, suspended antimatter particles bigger than any that have been detected before. Dr. Vittoria Vetra searches for Father Silvano Bentivoglio and found him being killed and a vial missing as well.
At Harvard University, Vatican police officer Claudio Vincenzi (David Pasquesi) found symbology professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) swimming at the university pool. Vincenzi's job is to summon Professor Langdon to the Vatican. Professor Langdon eventually followed Vincenzi to Rome, via a helicopter.
Back at the Vatican, Professor Langdon met Dr. Vetra. It was there the two knew why they were being summoned to the Vatican, and what Langdon was being shown by Vincenzi back at Harvard began to make sense. The Vatican has been receiving threats from an enemy of the past in the Illuminati which has been threatening the lives of the four preferiti (the four most likely cardinals to be elected as pope) which the Illuminati warned of killing each cardinal at each hour, one each before midnight where by then, the Vatican will be destroyed in a burst of light. Langdon deduced from the video message which the Vatican received that the four cardinals will die at the four altars of the "Path of Illumination." But no one knows where the four altars are located. And the clock is ticking.
The film adaptation of Dan Brown's mystery-thriller of between religion and science was originally meant to be the first of a trilogy which has the Harvard symbology professor Robert Langdon. But with the success of The Da Vinci Code which brought American author Dan Brown into the wider international audience, the adaptation of the original prequel to The Da Vinci Code has been viewed as a sequel to the 2006 release of the film adaptation of the novel. The timing of the release of the film adaptation of Angels and Demons is clearly reflected in the interest in the election of a new pope, like in real life, how Pope Benedict XVI was elected. In the novel, the papal election attracts little interest. Readers of the novel will also be able to detect other significant differences in the film. The camerlengo in the novel is an Italian, and not someone of Northern Ireland origin, as Ewan McGregor's character at one time in the film explained to Dr. Vittoria Vetra of how he came to be at the Vatican.
As someone who has read the novel of the same name and thoroughly enjoyed it, there was a certain degree of expectation. But what saved the film for me were the scenes at the Vatican Secret Archives and the race against time to find out where the four preferti might have been kidnapped.