Don't believe the hype

Rating: 2/10 (22 May 2006)

Having just given my vote I am genuinely saddened to see that most people are giving this dreary money making exercise 10 out of 10. It must be fans of MacGyver, desperate to see more of the same since Richard Dean Anderson moved on to Stargate-SG1. I went to see this film with low expectations, but even these were not met by this-made-for-TV adaptation. The production as a whole seemed rather pedestrian, both writing and acting were, for the most part, poor. The cinematography wasn't the greatest, there was never a sense of foreboding no matter how many dimly lit churches the characters entered. As for the plot, which apparently makes up for everything else, I lost track of the number of anagrams,cyphers and other examples of word play and it soon became tedious. They may keep you interested when you're reading the book, but they fail to do so on screen, especially when Langdon seems to solve them so quickly only to move onto the next. I'd agree that a cryptic crossword is an engaging, thought provoking source of entertainment. But you can't seriously watch someone else solving one (being fed the answers) and say it's thought provoking. Nor is it thrilling or exciting "I need to get to a library fast". Especially when the "crossword" has been set by Dan Brown (the non-thinkers Umberto Eco). Being an atheist myself this kind of conspiracy theory should pander to my lack of belief in the divinity of Christ and the power of the Catholic Church. But it's all based on factoids and the writer's own machinations. The way Teabing glosses over the fact that the Priory of Sion was the brain child of Pierre Plantard (a hoaxer who believed he was a direct descendant of the Merovignian Kings) with "That's what THEY want you to believe" is a perfect example. I fail to see how it can be so readily accepted as the truth behind a religious conspiracy. After all "History is the search for fact NOT truth".