"Witness the greatest cover-up in human history."

Rating: 10/10 (4 October 2007)

"The Da Vinci Code" is a film based on Dan Brown's famous and controversial novel. The book and the film have been criticized by Christians due to its plot which portrays elements of the Roman Catholic Church as being involved in a conspiracy. However, this never bothered me and it is clear enough that this is a work of fiction. The story follows Robert Langdon, a professor at Harvard, who becomes entangled in the aforementioned conspiracy. The film features an impressive array of locations, architecture, art and a notable score by Hans Zimmer as Langdon unravels the conspiracy.
A number of people were dissatisfied with Tom Hanks' portrayal of Robert Langdon. Tom Hanks certainly isn't as well-suited to the role of adventurous professor as Harrison Ford, but I found his performance to be respectable. Audrey Tautou is also notable as Sophie Neveu. My favorite performance of the film was Ian McKellen in his over-the-top and charismatic performance as Sir Leigh Teabing. Every scene with Sir Leigh in it is a delight to see. The supporting cast is great too, particularly Jean Reno as Captain Fache, Paul Bettany as Silas and Alfred Molina as Bishop Aringarosa.
This film has been criticized for not meeting expectations based on the book and generally being dull. I have never read the book and hence can't compare the book and film, but I can say that I didn't find this film to be dull. Quite the contrary, to me this film's main strength is that it sets up an interesting mystery and pursues it vigorously with a lot of interesting twists. Any film that manages that will always get high praise from me.