Starts well then makes a dash for the finishing post

Rating: Null/10 (1 June 2006)

"It all depends on what you believe," is Tom Hanks' role's own bottom line in 'The Da Vinci Code'. Ironically, it also seems appropriate to how audiences will respond to this film.
On the positive side, the film follows the book quite faithfully and makes good use of special effects to assist the viewer (whose average reading age will be much lower than readers of the book).
There are some important factual errors and missed opportunities in the book, which the film blindly regurgitates. For example, it makes no sense for a Zurich bank to offer any kind of retail banking facilities outside the jurisdiction of Switzerland - I would have resolved this by switching the château and banking scene order. Also a Geneva (instead of Zurich) bank would fit far better with the key character from that scene.
For me, the greatest missed opportunity in both forms of the story is to miss the inference from the underlying research material that the Catholic church has made the mother of Christ a substitute for Mary Magdalena as part of its campaign against her.