Some interesting stuff

Rating: 8/10 (15 December 2009)

I'm not a fan of Ron Howard or Dan Brown ...but I have to give it to them for this one. Early on, buy-in comes slow, and it's easy to roll your eyes (anti-matter again? ...that old chestnut?) but it steadily gets better. I thought it slightly better than a potboiler, and it has a stunning climax. As opposed to an emotional wallop (Your girlfriend is the descendant of Christ) it has a WOW aspect. Let's just say if you mention a new kind of bomb in an action movie, that bomb is both, a) required to go off, and b) be more interesting than the lat three hundred bombs, when it does. The climax is followed by a coda that lasts a good 15 minutes; and its machinations are very interesting, but which come (strangely) after you're ready for it to conclude. There's not a single development in the first two thirds of the film that's original or interesting. Everything good is in the coda.
This one takes place in Italy rather than France. It balances the mockery of religion and its hypocritical materialism; with a real reckoning of its power... before retreating safely to establishment respect (Booo! A cop-out). The rapid, on-the-fly analysis of 10 unremarkable Rennaisance sculptures offers nothing to match the breathtaking analysis of a single artists most famous paintings from da Vinci Code. Robert Langdon the 'symbologist' has precious few moments to detect/decipher symbols. The time frame (4 hours) is ludicrous. There's no way so much ground could be covered in 4 hours. And who are these villains that treat murders like puzzles?
When action/effects movies end, the mind usually reels as endless credits go by, implying that thousands of people got paid, but no one had much taste or brains. This was the opposite for me. The craft of FX movie-making is definitely on display. The hordes that must have worked on this receive my appreciation. This is a triumph of generally inconspicuous green screen work, punctuated by some nice FX sequences.