Leaves Questions Unanswered

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

ANGELS & DEMONS is the much-anticipated follow-up to the highly successful and highly controversial 2006 THE DA VINCI CODE, and although it is entertaining, it is less satisfying.

The reason I say “follow-up” instead of “sequel” is that even though the story is identified as taking place after the events in the first film, the novel by Dan Brown on which this film is based was published three years before the novel of THE DA VINCI CODE was published.

The story begins with the death of the Pope of the Roman Catholic Church and the Cardinals of the Church must choose the next Pope from among them to lead the world’s one billion Catholics.

Then we switch to the CERN Laboratory in Switzerland where the world’s largest particle collider is being used in an experiment to create antimatter.
The experiment succeeds, but one of the scientists is murdered and the antimatter is stolen.

Professor Robert Langdon, again played by Tom Hanks as the professor of symbology at Harvard University but without the ugly haircut this time, is summoned to the Vatican in Rome, because the four Cardinals who were favored for one of them to be chosen as the next Pope have been kidnaped by a group identifying themselves as the Illuminati, saying that they will kill one of the Cardinals every hour leading up to midnight, when they will destroy the Vatican with the stolen antimatter.

Langdon explains that the Illuminati is a secret organization dedicated to science and the search for truth, and when the head of the Vatican police asks Langdon, “Are you anti-Catholic, Professor Langdon?” Langdon answers, “No, I’m anti-vandalism.”

Now, the threat note from the kidnapers contains clues to where each of the Cardinals will be murdered, and so Langdon has to decipher the clues so that they can prevent their death.

And accompanying Langdon and the Vatican police is a beautiful scientist from the CERN Laboratory who can defuse the antimatter “bomb” if they can find if before its battery runs down and it explodes.

Confusing? Yes. Complicated? You bet. At one point I wrote in my notes, “What’s going on?”

The biggest question to ask ourselves, however, is “Why can’t science and religion just get along?”

ANGELS & DEMONS is entertaining, but it leaves too many questions unanswered.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”