Release Date:  May 15, 2009
Rating:  PG-13 (for sequences of violence, disturbing images and thematic material)
Genre:  Action/Adventure
Run Time:  138 min.
Director:  Ron Howard
Actors:  Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsgard, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kass, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Thure Lindhardt

Hardly a Christian in America is unfamiliar with author Dan Brown and the controversy surrounding his book The Da Vinci Code. An entire cottage industry of materials sprung up among authors and ministry leaders refuting the book’s, and subsequent movie’s, suspect theological claims.

Most notably, The Da Vinci Code purports to reveal from a host of suspect sources proof that Jesus Christ was not widely considered divine until the fourth century after his death, that Mary Magdalene was married to Jesus and bore his child, and that early church leaders left out parts of the Bible (the Gnostic Gospels) whose “facts” disputed their ideas about the nature of Christ and Christianity.

Now comes the movie version of the prequel to The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons. In the film, the story is rewritten to follow the events of The Da Vinci Code. Christians are perhaps not unjustified in expecting this prequel/sequel to deal with our faith in a heavy-handed fashion. But it does not.

If not for the fact that the story was originally written by the now infamous Dan Brown, Christians would be flocking to this movie.  Angels & Demons not only portrays Christianity in a positive light, it has some thoughtful things to say about the apparent ageless conflicts between faith and science.

In our story, the Pope has just died and the Cardinals of the Catholic Church are assembling in Rome to elect a new Holy Father. Before proceedings get underway, four of the Cardinals—the most likely candidates for the job—are kidnapped by a secretive brotherhood of historically anti-Catholic scientists called the Illuminati. These Illuminati have been nursing a grudge against the church for hundreds of years, due to the violent persecution that church leadership imposed on their ranks in centuries past.

Thus, in a move of desperation the Vatican reaches out to Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), the protagonist of The Da Vinci Code who posited the wacky theological and historical conspiracy of the first film, garnering an understandable bit of ire from Catholic leaders. But Langdon is an authority on the Illuminati and may be their only hope to rescuing the missing Cardinals, so an uneasy truce is formed as this agnostic academic hops a private jet to Rome.