Directed by: Ron Howard
Starring: Tom Hanks, Nikolaj Lie Kaas, Ewan McGregor, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Stellan Skarsgärd, Ayelet Zurer
Rating: PG-13

Tom Hanks in the “crackling” Angels & Demons. (Courtesy photo)

Looking for a trashy beach novel you can consume in two hours and 18 minutes? Look no further than Angels & Demons.

Director Ron Howard and Tom Hanks take a Vatican bomb threat very seriously so we don’t have to. The pair’s second collaboration on author Dan Brown’s irreverent adventures of symbologist Robert Langdon is everything The Da Vinci Code was not. The first film was a pulseless slog through what should have been a crackling and hilariously overwrought mystery. This one is just crackling and hilariously overwrought. The Da Vinci Code kept “worrying” about offending believers and nonbelievers alike. This time around, it’s clear that everyone has figured out how inconsequential it all is. Impetuous? Absolutely, but not so much for any religious scab-picking as for storytelling chutzpah.

Hanks is Langdon, the renowned symbologist who upset the Vatican very much when he uncovered the Da Vinci code. He’s rather surprised when they recruit him to help solve a bomb threat. The situation is this: anti-matter has been stolen from the CERN Super Hadron Collider and planted somewhere within the Vatican. It will go off at midnight, creating a black hole and consuming the city. Is that a good start or what? But there’s more: the Pope has died (murdered perhaps?), and now all the cardinals are sequestered in the Sistine Chapel—all except the four considered the top candidates, who have been kidnapped. One will be killed each hour starting at 8 p.m.

This spectacular crime has been brought to you by the Illuminati, an organization of scientists who are intent on avenging the murders of freethinkers by the Catholic Church. That’s where Langdon comes in. For reasons no one thinks to ask, these guys have left clues to the location of the bomb. With the help of CERN scientist Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer), Langdon must follow the clues in order to save the cardinals and stop the bomb from detonating.

It’s a tall order, friends. But if anyone can do it, it’s charming, self-deprecating Robert Langdon. After being straitjacketed by the role the first time around, Hanks tailors it into a perfect fit for him. The script by Akiva Goldsman and David Koepp actually confronts the science vs. religion debate head-on, including an impassioned speech by the idealistic young camerlengo (acting head of the church), Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor). By doing so they let each side trot out their standard arguments, lean slightly toward the respectfully agnostic, then hedge their bets beautifully. Between Brown and the screenwriters, it’s a work of artfully reductive mediation. That’s a good thing too, because the violence and destruction get downright biblical. Howard embraces the gruesome murders with such lingering closeups that I kept expecting Mel Gibson to appear grinning like a schoolboy.

He also does some nifty Ron Howard-style directing. The scope is wonderfully big, the art direction overstuffed like a buffet of heavy desserts. Howard keeps the pace moving, but makes sure we get the broad strokes. Never mind why. The point is they need to follow angel statues. And there are some fun tweaks, like when Langdon needs to change his outfit and only has a priest’s suit to choose from. Langdon may only have five hours to solve a mystery that should take weeks, but thank goodness Howard and the writers find time to inject humor.

Hanks is the show, but the supporting cast is very strong. Ayelet Zurer made a strong impression in a small role in Munich (2005). She’s dazzling here, making the nearly extraneous Vittoria very much worth having around. Zurer, already a star in her native Israel, should find international stardom after this. McGregor is great too, pulling off the nicest—and therefore the toughest—character in the film. Stellan Skarsgärd and Armin Mueller-Stahl are good as crusty church figures. The other standout is Danish actor Nikolaj Lie Kaas as the assassin. He’s controlled and creepy, a Bourne villain who has wandered into a much sillier thriller.

The wonderful Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest is for most florid and self-serious opening line of a novel. Watching Angels & Demons gives you the same kind of pleasure as reading the winning nominees. Angels & Demons is a wonderful paradox for an audience: it requires you to listen closely, but falls apart if you actually pay attention. And outside of being gratuitously violent, it’s a very enjoyable evening at the movies.

Alex Manugian lives in Sherman Oaks, Calif. He grew up in Groton and has reviewed movies for Harvard readers for many years.