The Vatican's ticking time bomb: Where's MapQuest when we need it?

Since "Angels & Demons" depends on a split-second schedule and a ticking time bomb that could destroy the Vatican, it's a little distracting when the Camerlengo, a priest entrusted with the pope's duties between papacies, breaks into the locked enclave of the College of Cardinals and lectures them on centuries of church history.

These men, many of them elderly, may face death in minutes, which the Camerlengo knows. The Commander of the Swiss Guard thinks he can evacuate the Vatican and the hundreds of thousands of faithful waiting in St. Peter's Square in 15 minutes before an explosion vaporizes "a big chunk of Rome," but frankly we in the audience think a lot of monsignors back home are going to receive promotions real soon.

Since very few plot details in the film are remotely plausible, including its desperate chase across Rome, the history lesson is excusable. Having been told about the long war between the church and the Illuminati, and religion and science, we are grateful for the briefing, even if the cardinals already know most of the history. This kind of film requires us to be very forgiving, and if we are, it promises to entertain. "Angels & Demons" succeeds.

It's based on a novel that came before "The DaVinci Code" in Dan Brown's oeuvre. Prof. Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is at Harvard when he is summoned from a swimming pool by an emissary from the Vatican, and flown to Rome to face a crisis. Earlier, we learned, a rare, sealed vial of anti-matter was stolen from the CERN Large Hadron Collider in Geneva, and a note taking credit comes from the Illuminati, a secret society that has long hated the Catholic Church because of the days when it persecuted Galileo and other scientists.

A "popular and progressive" pope has just died. The cardinals have been summoned to elect his successor. Four of them, the preferati, the favorites to be next pope, have been kidnapped. They will be executed in succession at 8, 9, 10 and 11 p.m., until the battery on the anti-matter vial runs out of juice at midnight and the faithful will see more than a puff of white smoke above the Vatican. I don't recall if the Illuminati had any demands. Maybe it just wants revenge.

In that case, why hide the vial at the end of a trail that can only be followed by clues discovered or intuited by Professor Langdon? Why not just blow up the place? What is the purpose of the scavenger hunt? Has it all been laboriously constructed as a test of Langdon's awesome knowledge? Are the Illuminati trying to get even after Langdon foiled Opus Dei, another secret society, in "The DaVinci Code"?

I don't know, and, reader, there is no time to care. Langdon uses his knowledge of Illuminati symbols to follow the trail though four Rome churches. He has uncanny luck. He spots and correctly identifies every clue, even though they're very well-hidden. Just as well, because one dungeon overlooked or one statue pointing the wrong way, and he loses. For his companion, Langdon has the beautiful and brilliant Vittoria Vetra (Ayelet Zurer) from CERN. Her father was murdered in the anti-matter theft. Her purpose is (a) to explain that the battery will indeed run down, (b) request her father's secret journals from Geneva, although they are never read, and (c) run along everywhere with Tom Hanks, to provide him with urgent conversation.