Cert: 12A

When's it out? Friday

Who's in it? Tom Hanks, Ayelet Zurer, Ewan McGregor, Armin Mueller Stahl, Stellan Skarsgard, Pierfrancesco Favino, Nikolaj Lie Kaas.

Who directed it? Ron Howard.

What's it about? In various religious texts and works of art, angels and demons are regarded as the messengers to the afterlife in either Heaven or Hell.

Ron Howard's action-packed film, adapted from the best-seller by Dan Brown, hovers somewhere between the two extremes, jettisoning the ponderous dialogue which blighted The Da Vinci Code in favour of a protracted game of cat and mouse around Rome.

The pace is certainly quicker by virtue of the lean script, the timeline of which shifts from the timeline of the source novel.

Thus, Angels & Demons is now a sequel rather than a prequel to The Da Vinci Code, which is referenced in a couple of lines of throwaway dialogue when characters remark on the strained relationship between Harvard professor Robert Langdon (Hanks) and the church.

The altered chronology matters little since Hanks is the sole returning member of cast as the urbane symbologist whose encyclopaedic knowledge of secret brotherhoods proves invaluable in saving the holy city from destruction.

When a respected research scientist is found dead in his particle physics laboratory in Geneva, his chest branded with a strange symbol, Langdon is summoned to investigate. He links the symbol to a secret society called the Illuminati, which was thought to have died out centuries ago.

In a chilling twist, the dead man's colleague - Italian scientist Vittoria Vetra (Zurer) - reveals that a canister full of antimatter was stolen from the laboratory, and is now primed to explode somewhere within the Vatican.

Robert and Vittoria search for clues under the watchful eye of the Camerlengo (McGregor), the acting head of state, and Cardinal Strauss (Mueller-Stahl).

Adding to their woes, the preferiti - the four Cardinals most likely to be elected Pope - are missing, kidnapped by an assassin (Kaas) with a horrific master plan.

Robert and Vittoria have just a few hours to avert catastrophe by following the 400-year-old Path of Illumination.

The verdict: Angels & Demons is thankfully shorter than its predecessor and ultimately more enjoyable, trading in the history lesson for thrills. Unfortunately, by excising so much of the plot that underpins Brown's book, Langdon is reduced to a glorified tour guide.