This is dire...

Rating: 3/10 (25 May 2006)

This film is complete rubbish... dull, boring, disjointed, trite, hammy.
I can't believe that such decent actors could put in such wooden performances (esp Hanks, Tautou, Bettany).... Ian McKellen was the only life in the whole thing....
The pacey style of the book was completely lost.... in the book there are lots of relatively short chapters and like an episode of a soap opera each chapter ends with a climax, surprise or suspense enticing you to turn the page and read on.... in the film that was all lost or the attempt made just didn't come off or was just plain comical.
And because they were tight for time and had to get in all the explanation of the conspiracy and religious background (with bizarre 'ghosts' superimposed on the contemporary scenes and out of focus flashbacks) that necessarily meant they left out loads about the back-stories about the characters, especially about the monk - anyone who hasn't read the book will just not understand the monk at all.
So you lost everything engaging about the characters and all you were left with was dull and lifeless polemic and dry boring "problem solving" scenes interspersed with arbitrary chases. And it was full of implausible holes and loose threads that were resolved and explored in the book but left out in the film.
All in all I'd give it 1 out of 10..... even National Treasure was a better chase thriller than this.