Hanks back in ‘Angels & Demons’

Movie: "Angels & Demons"

When: Opening Friday at local theaters

Cast: Tom Hanks, Ewan McGregor, Ayelet Zurer, Stellan Skarsg?rd, Armin Mueller-Stahl

Director: Ron Howard

The story: Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon tries to solve a murder -- and stop a terrorist act against the Vatican.

The buzz: Hanks returns to the role (but, thankfully, not the distracting hairdo) he played in 2006's "The Da Vinci Code," reuniting with director Howard for another controversial clerical thriller. Vatican officials, less than thrilled with the movie's portrayal of a shadowy anti-Catholic brotherhood called the Illuminati, declined a request for the movie to shoot at St. Peter's Square, prompting production officials to build a scale replica of the site -- at Southern California's Hollywood Park racetrack. (Other locations range from Rome, Italy, to the Little Europe section of the Universal Studios backlot.)