In the beginning was the word. In Dan Brown's books, as often as not, that word is a secret - one upon whose revelation the plot turns.

"Angels & Demons" is the second of Brown's mystico-consipiracy books to be filmed, following "The DaVinci Code" (2006, though this book was published earlier than DaVinci). Like its predecessor, the story turns on the gradual disrobing (if you will) of a commonly held belief down to its naked truth: avaricious, cunning, deceitful, even murderous. It's great stuff for a thriller, whether in book or movie form: Fast paced to the point of relentless (don't these people ever eat? Sleep? Pee?), piling surprise upon shock, breathtakingly compelling, and somewhat silly.

This time, Robert Langdon - Harvard University's most famous symbolist, or cryptographer, or symbolic architect, or whatever he is - is already in the doghouse with the Catholic Church over his previous escapade (presumably that DaVinci business). He's summoned to the Vatican upon the sudden death of a popular, liberal pope, modeled on Pope John XXIII.

Naturally the Vatican's higher officials look down on Langdon as a mere "symbologist," somewhat hypocritically: after all, the first scene shows the desecration of the papal ring that marked the deceased pope's authority, and what good are all these golden trappings and velvet robes and wooden crosses without the symbolic cosmology they represent? But Langdon is not here to investigate the pope's death, which at this point isn't even being questioned, but to explain a mysterious message that portends the return of an ancient enemy of the Church itself: the Illuminati.

Ah yes, our old friends the Illuminati, perhaps the least secret secret society in the world, aside from the Bohemian Club. As with The DaVinci Code, author Dan Brown pillages the periphery of pop history to come up with this conspiracy skulking on the fringes of public record. For the DaVinci book, Brown borrowed heavily to the point of litigation from the 1982 Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which tells the story of Jesus' presumed progeny and its supposed influence on European history.

For Angels & Demons, Brown could have used any number of pulp paranoid sources, including probably The Illuminati Trilogy, a mock conspiracy novel perpetrated by Playboy editors Robert Shea and Robert Anton Wilson . He would have found what most conspiracy theorists know, that the Illuminati were founded in May 1776 by Adam Weishaupt, making Italian sculptor and architect Bernini (1598-1680) an unlikely member. Of course there's no reason to let facts get in the way of delusion - quite the opposite - and some would trace the history of the Illuminati into ancient Egypt, if not to the stars.

The Illuminati, and their brethren in the Freemasons, have popped up in Hollywood movies before, such as "Lara Croft: Tomb Raider" and the "National Treasures" films with Nicholas Cage. These last are pretty much a blatant attempt to siphon off from the DaVinci franchise some of the paranoid thrills that comes from reading between the lines of history, though anything with Nick Cage qualifies as "guilty pleasure" anyway. (Conspiracy alert: Why is Jon Voight in all three of these films? I'm just saying . . . )

All that aside, I have to say that "Angles & Demons" is a better movie than "The DaVinci Code," perhaps because expectations were not as high. Tom Hanks seems more comfortable in the role (I would have preferred Bill Pullman, but that's just me), adding a bit of cockiness to the role missing the first time around. The script seems sharper too, probably due to bringing in David Koepp to support Akiva Goldsman for a dream team of blockbuster scribes.

As in most of director Ron Howard's movies, the cast is A-list, and there are lots of familiar faces here, including Stellan Skarsgaard, Ewan MacGregor and Armin Mueller-Stahl (from "Eastern Promises" of a couple years back). And the climactic fireworks scene is cosmically satisfying, a nice expression of Hollywood FX and ergot intoxication.

Quibbles? I have a few. One is Ayelet Zurer, who plays the femme du jour in this film, an Italian nuclear physicist whose experiment with anti-matter at CERN gives the plot its MacGuffin. Zurer's star is slowly rising - she was in Spielberg's "Munich," the pointless thriller "Vantage Point," and the melodrama "Fugitive Pieces" which premiered at the Sonoma Valley Film Festival last year. (See this earlier blog, with photos of the lovely Ayelet.)

She does a nice job here, but - what is a woman doing following Robert Langdon into the most secret recesses of the all-male Vatican Archives without so much as a driver's license check? (Had they done so, they would have found that Zurer is an Israeli, making her doubly dangerous in these cloistered halls.)

Then there's the plot, which zooms us from cathedral to catacomb, fountain to obelisk, each a way-station on the so-called "Path of Illumination," each the scene of a dastardly murder. They always arrive, just in time to get their location shots in - as if the notoriously impenetrable traffic in the streets of Rome parts, like the Red Sea, to perpetuate the plot.

The other thing is that troubling symbol of the Illuminati, which pops up several time: the eye in the pyramid. It's on the Galileo manuscript in those Vatican Archives, and on the floor of a Renaissance chapel, to name two. Gotta dollar bill? It's on the back of that, too - the Great Seal of the United States, founded in 1776 . . . the same year as the Bavarian Illuminati.

But the story doesn't, as they say, "go there." Perhaps they're leaving mere domestic paranoia to the "National Treasures" franchise, and focusing this series on the historic culture tours of Europe's capitals. Or perhaps they're saving the best for next: Dan Brown's newest book, due out in the fall, is called "The Lost Symbol," and it takes place in the heart of Nick Cage country - Washington, DC.

And just what do you suppose that "lost symbol" is?