Angels & Demons 天使與魔鬼

"Angels & Demons," again starring Tom Hanks as Langdon and directed by Ron Howard, hits local theatres today against a backdrop of the church vs. science.

The film opens with the death of the pontiff in Rome, while at the same time scientists from the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) secretly create anti-matter, also nicknamed "The God Particle."

The pope's succession quickly becomes a pretext for conspiracies within the church and threats from an ancient secret brotherhood called "The Illuminati," which plans to kill four prominent cardinals in line for election as the new pope.

Famed symbologist Robert Langdon is recruited by the Vatican to decipher the clues linked to the centuries-old secret society in order to save the kidnapped cardinals, who are to be killed on the hour.

"He is not the man the Vatican trusts – he is the man the Vatican needs," Howard said in production notes for the movie, drawing a line between Hanks' character in "Angels & Demons" and in "The Da Vinci Code." The latter outraged the Vatican and some Catholics because of its fictional story lines about conspiracy and the Catholic church.

Nevertheless, the Vatican newspaper, L'Osservatore Romano, ran two editorials on the premiere of "Angels and Demons" held on May 1 in Rome, neither panning nor praising the film, but rather offering up a mix of positive and negative comments.

One of the editorials called the film "ephemeral," but also conceded that it was "gripping" and called the camera work "splendid." It called the film "pretentious," but added that Ron Howard's direction was "dynamic and alluring."

The other editorial, headlined "The Secret of His Success," said the church should ask itself why such a "simplistic and partial" vision of the church as portrayed in Dan Brown's works is so successful, even among Catholics.

Indeed, Brown is invariably playing on the latent contradictions and conflicts within the Catholic church, and don't expect Howard to try to find alternatives in his film.

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