by Dave Franklin

Created on: May 25, 2009

After the furore and commercial, if not critical, success of The Da Vinci Code, it was inevitable that Angels and Demons would be next on Ron Howard's "to do" list. Chronologically Robert Langdon's first outing , but here implied as a sequel, it shares all of the violent, conspiracy theory plot lines of its predecessor. Here though the story is slightly less controversial and in many ways shows the Vatican in a very sympathetic light. Rather than being the enemy this time round, they are the client and any moral message seems to be that a bad guy is a bad guy, whomever they may be working for.

An old evil has arisen in the name of science to reap revenge on the Catholic church at a time when it is most vulnerable, the legacy of an ancient and clandestine group of scientific renegades that have bided their time for centuries. Now through abduction, murder and a futuristic bomb, big enough to destroy half of Rome, they aim to unleash their vengeance on the Vatican for years of persecution. Thankfully in the manner of all fictional bad guys, instead of just getting on with the job at hand, they have left a series of clues, clues built into the very fabric of the renaissance architecture of Rome, clues that only one man would be able to unravel. Enter Robert Langdon.

The backdrop of the film makes for a stunning visual experience as our heroes race from one gloomy ornate gothic pile to another and all the time the bigger canvas of the Eternal Cities glorious designs looms large above the action. The film also moves at a faster pace than The Da Vinci Code, which seemed to suffer under the weight of its subject matter. If anything it moves at such a speed that anyone not familiar with the book may lose track of what's going on.

And on the subject of fans of the book, I can imagine that many will feel cheated by this treatment of the film. Dan Browns stories always rely on a mass of background information, and his books are of a size that enables him to lay out the information in an easily understandable fashion. Films are a more restrained medium and many fans may not agree with the compromise of academia losing ground to action. There are some wonderful and thought provoking pieces of dialogue in the book about the nature of religion, spirituality and science that have to be sacrificed in the name of streamlining. In its defence I will say that unless you are going to take the route Peter Jackson did to bring Lord of the Rings to the screen and allow yourself

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