Not all that great

Rating: 5/10 (16 June 2006)

I have to say, I was pretty disappointed with the movie - after all the grand hype, it turned out to be pretty dull. I usually love Tom Hanks, but this time he might as well of not even showed up. His character was lifeless at best. Audry Tautou was also a bad choice of actress for this role. She certainly didn't capture the spirit of the character. It doesn't bode well when you have a film with the two main characters that are boring and devoid of chemistry.
The standouts are Ian McKellen who was great as always and Paul Bettany who was chilling as Silas.
As for the story - I saw the movie before I read the book and found the story to be quite interesting. After reading the book I will say that the movie faithfully follows, with a few exceptions, the book. As for it being fictional - no doubt as most of the references to Da Vinci's paintings, Templer history and the Priory of Sion was lacking in any reality. Interestingly, Dan Brown wants us to think that all the art and architecture was based on fact - this is quite laughable when he mistakenly (most certainly for effect) says the pyramid in front of the Louve has 666 panes of glass when in fact it has 673. I guess the real number just doesn't have that Hollywood appeal! All that aside, the movie had a lot of potential to be good. To bad some bad casting ruined that.