Angels and Demons: Review

Last night I saw the new Dan Brown movie, Angels and Demons, and I wanted to share just a couple thoughts with anyone who might be thinking of seeing it.

First off, I must say that this movie is about 6000 times better than The DaVinci Code movie. Now perhaps if I had read the book first (as I foolishly did for DaVinci) I might think differently, but this time I just enjoyed the movie. It is a good deal different than that other book/movie. First of all, the plot is not premised upon ideas that are an offense to the orthodox Christian faith (i.e. we must worship a goddess along with God, Jesus was married and his bloodline is still around, the Bible and orthodoxy were invented by the Emperor Constantine, etc.). Secondly, the movie is actually exciting.

The basic premise: someone - apparently an anti-Vatican secret society called the Illuminati, has stolen an anti-matter device and threatens to blow up the Vatican (think James Bond) only days after the pope suddenly and mysteriously died. Even as the Cardinals gather for conclave, several of the frontrunners for the papal job are kidnapped and will be put to death each hour by the mysterious Illuminati at hidden locations in Rome.

Fortunately, the famous symbolologist Professor Langdon is in town and he thinks he can find the hidden "churches" of the Illuminati in Rome. So he starts digging through the archives of the Vatican to find clues in manuscripts, art, and architecture that lead him from one secret Illuminati church to the next (think: National Treasure) in hopes of arriving in time to save the missing Cardinals from horrible deaths and the Vatican itself from being vaporised by the explosion of the anti-matter device!
There are some cool plot-twists (and some annoying plot holes) in this thriller in which you never really know whom you can trust (besides Tom Hanks, of course) - and just when you think you know who the good and the bad and the ugly are, the plot twists everything around.

How is it's portrayal of Christianity? Basically neutral, though there is a lot that could be construed as a negative assessment of Roman Catholicism in particular (political maneuvering among church prelates, embarrasing historical incidents are presented in simplistic form - i.e. Galileo). And the bad guy turns out to be a Catholic religious fanatic (go figure) - perhaps contributing to a general inarticulate distrust of "religion" in our culture. On the other hand, there are some positive clerical characters and some profoundly true and wise statements uttered from the mouths of clergymen (although some of them are called into question when we learn who the 'heavy' is).

The movie takes an admirable stab at presenting the message "faith and science do not have to be enemies, they can work together," but sadly does little more than make the assertion a couple times, rather than exploring what that might mean even a little bit (though that might be too much to expect from a movie). At any rate, it is an enjoyable movie that could function as a conversation starter on some of these issues.