Dan Brown is a terrible writer. Despite the fact his so-called novels sell millions of copies and are admittedly classic beach reading, it doesn't make his work remotely literary. And yes, it is possible to write literary beach books (Iain Banks and Neal Stephenson do it). Brown's prose is paced and structured like he watched too much action television in the 1970s and written like a bad script treatment, complete with strategic placements for dissolves and/or commercial breaks.

Precisely because of this, Brown's love-them-or-hate-them books are perfect for screen adaptations. Expect to see his upcoming The Lost Symbol in theaters in 2011. The Da Vinci Code stirred the wrath of the devout and propelled the film to almost $800 million in global box office receipts in 2006. Da Vinci was a needlessly complex, globetrotting trifle that tapped tastes for an academic James Bond, and Ron Howard's inoffensive, painfully mainstream tendencies meshed perfectly with Brown's Filmmaking 101 foundation.

Angels & Demons' central premise is the relationship between science and religion. Published before Da Vinci, it has a similarly complex - sometimes convoluted - plot that encompasses string theory and antimatter, the Hadron Collider, a half-century-old secret society of militant scientists bent on revenge, papal conclave, Bernini, a hired killer and the survival of the Catholic Church. And like The Da Vinci Code, it's similarly ludicrous.

When four cardinals, leading contenders to be elected as the next Pope, are kidnapped by the shady Illuminati, Roman police inspector Olivetti (Pierfrancesco Favino) calls secular Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks, with a much better haircut) to help find them. He also recruits Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer, gorgeous and convincingly Italian), a physicist working on an alternative energy source in Geneva. It seems the kidnappers have also swiped a vial of her antimatter, enough to level Vatican City if it destabilizes. The Illuminati have hidden the antimatter vial in their own church, which can be found using cryptic clues that, taken together, create a map to its location - if you know where every Bernini sculpture in Rome is and where Raphael is actually buried. Uh. Yeah.

Also on the case is Swiss Guard Commander Richter (Stellan Skarsgard, Mamma Mia!). He's butting heads with interim pope, Camerlengo Patrick McKenna (Ewan McGregor) and Cardinal Strauss (Armin Meuller-Stahl, Eastern Promises), who's trying to carry on with the conclave, over evacuation plans should the Illuminati prevail. Naturally, all these Italians and Church elders know nothing about Church history or baroque art and so it's up to Langdon to decode the symbols and save the day.

Writers David Koepp (Spider-Man) and Akiva Goldsman (I Am Legend) are faithful enough to the book to make Brown fans happy, and load the screenplay with oodles of Exposition Fairies for newcomers. Those are invisible, verbose creatures dressed up as casual "dialogue", that explain the entire backstory in lieu of acting or film language: "The Illuminati did not become violent until the 17th century. Their name means 'The Enlightened Ones'. They were physicists, mathematicians, astronomers. In the 1500s they started meeting in secret, because they were concerned about the church's inaccurate teachings ..." Langdon explains ad nauseum. Or Vittoria's sermon about antimatter: "The antimatter is suspended in an airtight nano-composite shell with electromagnets on each end. But if it were to fall out of suspension, and come into contact with matter..." Just in case you missed any Star Trek episode where the Enterprise utilized its devastating antimatter spread and need a refresher.

Thankfully, there's an uncredited co-star that makes watching the film easier: Rome. The Italian government (or what exists of it) should be rejoicing at saving millions of euro on a tourism campaign this year; it doesn't get better than this. Cinematographer Salvatore Totino's compositions are functional, not flashy, but when you have the Piazza San Pietro as your set and Bernini sculptures as decor, who needs to get flashy?

The furor that erupted over Da Vinci has been almost completely absent this time around, and it's not likely to get louder. There's no lightning rod for controversy, and Langdon is, after all, on a mission to save the Church. But Angels & Demons is rote even by Howard's standards, which is only a negative depending on your point of view. For fans of the earlier film and Hanks' somnambulistic performance A & D will be perfect escapist entertainment. It moves relatively quickly (though could stand to lose 20 minutes) and throws in plenty of shifty-eyed supporting characters to maintain the illusion of mystery. For fence-sitters hoping for better this time around, the film will be a letdown, and anyone who's ever seen a movie like this will cotton on right away that the most obvious bad guy isn't that bad. Content aside, it's the same movie with some bad Catholic jokes thrown in for good measure (humor being all but absent from the first Langdon film). Either way, Angels & Demons is preaching to the choir.

Angels & Demons opened in Hong Kong Thursday.

(HK Edition 05/16/2009 page3)