After cracking the Da Vinci Code, it’s perhaps understandable that Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Hanks) isn’t in the Catholic Church's good books.
 
However, a crisis in the Vatican forces them to desperately seek help from the agnostic sleuth now minus his dodgy mullet (probably excised by papal decree).
 
While Rome is going about electing a new pope, the Preferati – the four Cardinals most favoured to be become the new Vicar of Christ – have been kidnapped by The Illuminati, a secret group and sworn enemies of the church.
 
To make their demands a little more high stakes, they’ve also captured a capsule of anti-matter – with the payload of a handful of nuclear bombs – from the world’s largest particle accelerator in Switzerland.
 
As an act of revenge dating back four hundred years, they’re threatening to kills the Cardinals and destroy Vatican City…and the set of devious clues they’ve left can only really be deciphered by Langdon.
 
Director Ron Howard knows exactly what he’s doing and this switchbacking whodunnit proves to be a watchable affair, punctuated by some gorily contrived deaths as the Cardinals are despatched one by one.
 
(the 12A certificate seems a little mild given there’s scenes of a rat doing something unmentionable to a corpse’s face and another cardinal dies a very fiery death a la Joan of Arc).
 
Robert and his sultry sidekick – Zurer’s particle physicist Vittoria Vetra – gets round more churches than a series of Songs of Praise and there’s plenty of holy red herrings floating down the corridors of Vatican City.
 
Crazily linking more leaps of logic than Adam West’s TV Batman, Langdon crams a lot into a short night. and we learn that His Holiness's Swiss Guard pack more than a fancy penknife.

Wisely, Howard ditches some of the daft dramatic excesses of the book – Langdon’s splashdown in the Tiber after dropping from a helicopter with a tarpaulin as a parachute sensibly gets the chop.
 
After the weight of expectation awaiting The Da Vinci Code, this is a more enjoyable affair and relaxed affair – a sort of National Treasure for grown-ups.
 
Dan Brown fans won’t need converting.

Tim Evans