The Da Vinci Code

So many people have read Dan Brown's book or are familiar with the controversy over it that I am only going to write a few lines about the plot of this film.

Harvard Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is in Paris giving a lecture. Shortly thereafter he is accused of murdering a curator from the Louvre. The accusation is based upon the fact that Langdon was supposed to meet the curator (but the curator never showed up) and his name is in the curator's date book. To Langdon's rescue comes policewoman Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) who just happens to be the slain man's granddaughter (and is not a policewoman after all). They escape from the Louvre and are pursued by a dogged policeman named Captain Fache (Jean Reno). They find refuge in the house of an eccentric British scholar named Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellan). In the meantime, there are more murders which are carried out by an Albino monk named Silas (Paul Bettany) who takes his orders from the sleazy Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina) who gets his orders from a mysterious man known only as "The Teacher." It turns out that Robert and Sophie have to figure out the puzzle that will lead them to the mystery of the Holy Grail. A group known as the Priory of Sion (to which Sophie's grandfather belonged) has a secret that they would like to reveal to the world. The secret is that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene and that they had a child. In other words, Jesus was a man not a god. An opposing Catholic group, Opus Dei, wants to destroy everyone connected to the Priory. In that way they would destroy the secret and maintain the status quo of the Church. That is the plot in a nutshell. There are a few other things that we discover but if you haven't read the book then why should I spoil the film for you (if you decide you still want to see it after reading this review)?

The film is directed by Ron Howard and is just so dull. Howard takes no risks because he wants everyone to like his film. A.O. Scott of the New York Times summed Howard and the film up in just one word - safe. A film like this needs an edgier filmmaker. Akiva Goldsman's script is plodding and the characters are like stick figures. I can't totally fault Howard and Goldsman for this. Brown is not a great writer and the novel also suffered from characters that were not fleshed out.

Hanks is a good actor but he is not right for the role of Langdon. He doesn't seem intellectual enough to be a professor. Tautou's character lacks vim and vigor and her chemistry with Hanks is nonexistent. McKellan gives the best performance in the film. His character is a lively number. However, the last time we see him in the film he comes across as a buffoon. Bettany's Silas is almost cartoonish. I expect to see a character like this on the children's morning cartoon show on television. In a scene in which Silas performs self flagellation I should have felt revulsion. Instead, I found myself laughing. Reno runs around and screams and that is about it.
And, Molina has almost nothing to do as the unsavory Bishop. The best things about the film are the haunting musical score by Hans Zimmer and the beautiful cinematography by Salvatore Totino.

The film runs two and a half hours and really needs to be edited by at least a half an hour. This is a case where more is less. The subject covered in The Da Vinci Code is a fascinating one. I hope that one day we will have a film (and a book) that is equally as fascinating.