Ron Howard's excellent adaptation of Dan Brown's Exciting novel.

Rating: 10/10 (25 November 2009)

It is a hard job to adapt novels into screenplays, then into a film as exciting & thrilling as the original novel.
There have & always will be changes made,hopefully for the better.
Akiva Goldman & David Knoep have adapted Dan Brown's exciting thrilling novel in an excellent, exciting & thrilling movie.The changes made were mainly due to cast choices & editing the novel to a proper running time. Ron Howard's direction is crisp & tight. As we know this is a sequel to THE DA VINCI CODE.
I, for one did not care for THE DA VINCI CODE. Angels & Demons is a far better movie.
Since the film story happens in about an 18 hour time span,there are no unneeded flashbacks or back-story,(a few short scenes tells all).
There is also no time for any sort of love story. Adding one would have been very unrealistic.
Tom Hanks is much better as Langdon this time out. Ayalot Zurer an Isreali actress is a co-scientist. helping Langdon solve this puzzle.
As he always is, Ewan MacGregor fits his role like a kid glove. The other main cast members also are international stars. Stellen Skarsgaard, Armen Mueller Stahl and Pierfrancisco Favino, who is an up & coming star from Italy.
The Special Visual & Audio effects are just magnificent. Obviously they could not film in the Vatican or St. Peters Square, The effects are so good you cannot tell that these scenes are not the real thing.
NOTE, there are only two explosions one part way into the film & the final one. This is the right way to do special effects.
The story has great stunt work, BUT not the phony stuff we see in other films. The film does have a few flaws. what film does not, just sit back like I did & enjoy. one more thing, great music score by Hanz Zimmer.
Ratings: **** (out of 4) 97 points(out of 100) IMDb 10 out of 10)