Skip the Movie, Read the Book

Rating: Null/10 (20 October 2007)

The Da Vinci Code
Total- 4.6 out of 10
Sound- 8/10 Vision- 8/10 Design- 8/10 Acting- 4/10 Story- 3/10
Skip the Movie, Read the Book
By this point you, or someone you know has read the book, The Da Vinci Code, by Dan Brown. I broke down and finally read it too, to get ready for the movie since I figured that a movie with Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellan, Paul Bettany and Jean Reno can't be all bad. Flat out, this is a case where the book is much superior to the movie, although that's not really saying very much. The Da Vinci Code is a second rate story trapped in a third rate novel and it's much worse on screen since all its flaws are magnified to the size of 100 foot screen.
There is no chemistry between the main characters, at all. This is a real shame since Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou look great together on screen but they don't look like they had a lot of fun making this movie. Both Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon who is a Harvard professor of symbology (a discipline that doesn't exist and just seems to be an excuse to sound like you know something when you really don't know anything) and Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu, a French police cryptologist aren't convincing in their roles. They both sleepwalk through their parts and look bored delivering the plot boiler, pulp fiction-like dialog. In the many chase scenes there is never a hint that either Langdon is being chased by the police for murder or that Neveu is risking her life and career helping the accused murderer of her own grandfather. The tension that should be in the movie is totally absent.
As a viewer, you never really feel a bond with the main characters, but you really feel something for the supporting actors. I think Ian McKellan's portrayal of Leigh Teabing was right on. He completely stole the show and obviously didn't take the movie seriously at all and completely hammed up his role of bête-noir in the story. His explanation of the Holy Grail in his French castle estate is probably the best part of the movie. Paul Bettany as Silas the albino assassin monk is menacing and frightening. I really wanted his character to come out a lot better in both the book and the movie since he has the most interesting story of all the characters. I do think the two scenes where we see him making penance and scouring himself are a little much and those scenes probably lasted too long for the movie's good. Jean Reno as Fache, the French police detective is great too playing a relentless detective who isn't like Javert and sees his mistake in the end. Alfred Molina as Bishop Aringarosa has some good moments too and does fine in his role.
Having filmed on location in Paris at the Louvre, in London at Westminster Abbey and at the famous Lincoln Cathedral that doubles for The Temple Church, director Ron Howard couldn't go wrong. The cinematography great is and so is the sound. The flashback visual effects that Howard uses to illustrate the past history as Langdon or Teabing explains the history and back story of the movie is very effective but it made me want to see more of the Crusades or more about the Knights Templar. Ron Howard is good at making big cinematic gestures but somehow he forgot that the whole movie is a big chase from Paris to London and as I said above the view doesn't get the feeling that anyone is ever in danger or there is anything really at stake. The movie is about half an hour too long and could have used some work in the editing room to make the pace of the movie from a drama into a thriller, which the movie wants to be. The music by Hans Zimmer really sounds like it should be in a thriller but without the action on screen the music falls flat and just sounds like it was taken from an Indiana Jones movie.
After seeing The Da Vinci Code, I have to wonder what the fuss is all about. It's just a novel or a movie and not a very good one on either count. Anyone who is taking this fictional account at all seriously has to I remember there were a lot of yawns in the theater and everyone left very quickly as they were talking about how underwhelmed they were about the movie. If you're really interested in this, read the book, or read Holy Blood, Holy Grail, which Dan Brown liberally took his ideas from, even going so far to name Leigh Teabing after Leigh Baigent who is one of the authors of Holy Blood, Holy Grail. The Da Vinci Code proves the old phrase of the book being far better than the movie to be true at least in this case.