First Hit: Poorly constructed, not believable, and without suspense.
I’m not sure why this film was made except to rake in money from the audience who watched its poorly made predecessor The Da Vinci Code.
At the beginning we find ourselves in a lab in Sweden they create three hermetically sealed containers of anti-matter. This is dangerous stuff, they say. Someone steals one of the containers by gouging out one of the scientist’s eyeballs to use on a retinal scanner which allows him to break into the room where the anti-matter is kept.
Next, there is a threat on the Vatican to blow it up with the anti-matter and it is made more important because the same guy kidnaps 4 important Cardinals and they are each scheduled to die just prior to the antimatter blowing up the Vatican.
The Pope has died and his young helper (Played by Ewan McGregor) has temporary and limited Pope power so he tries to help solve the crime (or does he?).
To save the day (Find the anti-matter and kidnapped Cardinals) they call in Robert Langdon (Played by Tom Hanks) who doesn’t get on well with the Vatican because of his previous book which dissed the Vatican and the Catholics. But they need his expertise in the real history of Catholicism to tell them about the Illuminati, a secret sect that broke off from the Vatican because they delved in finding out the truth of humanity through science.
To assist Langdon the scientist, Vittoria Vetra (Played by Ayelet Zurer), who helped create the antimatter joins in the search because she is the only one who can change the battery in the anti-matter’s container. The battery keeps it from becoming matter and exploding.
Ron Howard, as director, shoots nice pictures but really needs to focus on finding good material about people that we can care about. Tom Hanks must be in the sunset of his career if he couldn’t see that this film has no soul and nothing to care about. I’d ask him to remember Philadelphia and Forrest Gump and do a gap analysis against any script he receives. As for the rest of the cast, they were not believable except Armin Mueller-Stahl as Cardinal Strauss who seemed to bring some authenticity to his role.
Overall: A visually pretty waste of talent and time. But if you like driving around Rome fast in cars this film might be for you.