This sequel to The DaVinci Code (actually based on an earlier novel) has some nice twists and turns, holds the viewer’s interest, and even has scattered comic bits, but the plot makes very little sense.

Once again Tom Hanks has to decode a series of mysterious puzzles, this time connected with the Illuminati, in an effort to prevent a catastrophe—a pretty big one: the threatened destruction of the Vatican by an antimatter bomb. Solving the puzzles requires doing research in the Vatican library, but no other scholars or even librarians are called in to help (or even happen to be hanging around), just a security guard and a scientist present only because she had something to do with the antimatter. Some of the plot twists render earlier parts of the story even more nonsensical than they seemed to at the time.

But despite all the illogic and factual errors, it’s still a reasonably entertaining movie, and the effects are impressive if not always obvious. Since the filmmakers couldn’t shoot in the Vatican City, they had to fake everything from St Peter’s Square to the Sistine Chapel.

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