Angels & Demons drawing good early review buzz

A few early reviews, including the one below, are coming in on Angels & Demons, the sequel to the Da Vinci Code. The film is (thankfully) faster-paced and more thrilling (important for a thriller!).

Science or religion? Wait, there’s room for both. If the world could be rendered as simple as “Angels & Demons,” we’d all be living in a less confusing place. Taking to heart the critics’ lament that the first Dan Brown novel-to-film “The Da Vinci Code” was talky, static and arcane, director Ron Howard and his crew have worked hard to make Professor Robert Langdon’s return a thrilling, faster-paced walk in the park. It will be difficult for this papal mystery, beautifully shot in Rome and Rome-like locations, to gross less than its phenomenal predecessor, which topped $750 million worldwide for Sony Pictures in 2006. Plucking the same violent, occult strings as “Da Vinci” while avoiding its leadenness, “Angels” keeps the action coming for the best part of 139 minutes. Scripters David Koepp and Akiva Goldsman have taken a firmer hand with Brown’s material. The opening scene, for example, omits the hypersonic Vatican jet that transports crack Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) from Cambridge to Geneva in an hour, opting for more conventional means to get him to Rome and into the thick of the action. – From The Hollywood Reporter