A bit of a let down

Rating: 6/10 (9 October 2006)

**SPOILERS!!**
Whilst anticipating the movie, I had plenty of creative ideas of what it would be like. I imagined Da Vinci leaving a giant puzzle, bits and pieces spread throughout all his works, with all kinds of challenges to procure and identify these clues, which would later be pieced together to form a complex and intriguing mystery, perhaps a super-invention being way ahead of its time, all the while being chased by evil pseudo-Christian organizations, gangsters, the police and perhaps entire nations. So I got a bit disappointed with the final result. The cops needlessly keep chasing our innocent hero without really adding anything to the story. There is no real mystery unraveling, in the middle we get to learn it's all about finding a map someone hid in a bank, which is the object of interest for the rest of the movie, a bit of a let down. In the end they find what they're looking for with the map's help, namely learning the true heritage of Agent Sophie Neveu (which everyone in her community apparently already knew anyways) and the location of Mary Magdalene, an interesting historical find but nothing so world-changing to warrant such secrecy and betrayal, and the movie ends. The puzzles limit themselves to a dying man, leaving needlessly complicated clues in his final minutes just to find a well guarded map, protected by a medieval locking mechanism that is supposed to pose a challenge in this day and age. The evil templars apparently send only one single, self-tortured guy to get the job done, later even unable to take on a wheel-chaired man. In the beginning his character and organization seemed to have potential, but at the end he just gets used and misguided and ends up shot. The bad guys have no real interest in finding the 'holy grail' in order to accomplish their own projects, but rather in keeping things the way they were and trying to kill our heroes in order to keep the church' secrets, which downgrades the point of the quest even more. There is some betrayal in the movie from so-called friends switching sides and having their own agendas, but basically these friends help them, switch sides, but it seems to have little influence on the unfolding story. The character of Tom Hanks is given some extra color with having experienced some youth traumas, but it really doesn't add anything to the movie. Also the childhood of Agent Sophie Neveu seems like a desperate attempt to give the character some depth, but at least that ties in to the story. In all, this movie had a lot of potential, but it fails to deliver.
6/10.