A scientist at one of the most prestigious institutes of the world, CERN, is found brutally murdered and a container of precious, volatile anti-matter is stolen. The killer leaves clues that point to the Illuminati, a secretive organization, supposedly founded by Galileo Galilei, that aims to destroy the Vatican and usher in a new age of enlightenment. The minions of the Vatican send for Robert Langdon, a Harvard symblogist and expert on everything, to find the one responsible and to prevent the Vatican from annihilation. He will uncover a shocking truth that would rock the foundation of the Catholic church.
There it is: The second movie adaptation of a Dan Brown novel.
Like the DaVinci Code it offers a high octane treausure hunt around historical sights, each offering a new revelation about a misconstrued historical context, finally pointing to a twisted conspiracy theory that does a lot for the sake of entertainment, but little for the sake of sober historical study.
The movie incompetantly tries to revive the epic struggle between religion and science between the adrenaline-filled action scenes and loosely throws in fancy words like anti-matter or God-Particle (commonly known as the Higgs-Boson, if you are interested).
Dan Brown pulls off his usual trick: Take a well-known myth, throw in a humungous conspiracy theory, accompanied by some fascinating, yet too often questionable statements.
The movie certainly qualifies for acceptable entetainment, yet tries to be more convincing than it is.