Just a bit dull, really

Rating: 4/10 (28 July 2006)

Meh. Just dull, really. No real tension despite an attempt to raise it by means of a few (ridiculously staged, convoluted set up) chases, a modicum of plot twisting that makes no sense, and a bit of the old ultra-violence. Toutou tries to be emotional with a few raised eyebrows, Reno sleepwalks through and says 'merde!' a few times, McKellen picks up a cheque for doing what he always does and Hanks continues his long slow slide into middle age without really finding a niche for himself - romantic lead? action hero? He tries both here, and doesn't convince in either. Howard plots the film by numbers, making sure that even the hard of thinking can follow it. It just looks like a low budget film made with a huge amount of money. You don't really care about any of the characters as they slip from good to bad to good without any real explanation apart from bizarre sociopathic behaviour and 'slap the forehead' obvious moments.
But I suspect the whole thing is unfilmable anyway. It's really a plot written around a supposition (the whole holy grail thing), and as such, the plotting of the film is not as interesting as the wider supposition, to which so much documentary footage has already been devoted. So we're left with this hotch potch: neither documentary, nor thriller, it meanders between the two with clunky dialogue that tries to advance the plot without losing the audience.
'I must find a library - quick'. C'mon.
By the way, in Britain, we do not all have red phone boxes, red buses, nor live within a couple of hundred yards of major landmarks like Tower Bridge or Millennium Dome. Amazing though it may seem.