Rocking Christianity to the Core

Rating: 7/10 (21 May 2006)

So what's all the fuss about? Tom Hanks is a visiting American professor of Theology in Paris and Audrey Tautou is a cryptologist with the French police. Hanks is accused of murdering Tautou's grandfather and she believes him when he says he's innocent. The investigating detective, Jean Reno, has another agenda going as he's a member of Opus Dei.
The DaVinci Code is a murder mystery chase very much in the style of such Hitchcock thrillers as North By Northwest and The 39 Steps. It's not as good as those two, but not bad either. Ron Howard has made an entertaining enough film and should put a lot of money in his pocket with all the protests going on. As is usually the case, they're driving up the box office. You can't buy the kind of publicity that fundamentalist Christians are giving this film.
So what's the protest for? We've got a couple of secret religious societies protecting their secrets and killing a lot of people to do it. One of the secrets is that Jesus was in fact a very human soul who did human things such as get married to Mary Magdalene and have a daughter. Supposedly she went to France with her child and is in fact buried in France. And there are descendants walking around today.
The novel by Dan Brown certainly was well received and sold millions of copies. But folks it is when all is said and done, a NOVEL. It's a work of fiction from an imaginative author, nothing more. In fact at the very beginning of the opening credits it says that the movie is taken from the NOVEL by Dan Brown.
Ron Howard will need several Brink's Armored cars to haul away all the profits he will make with The DaVinci Code. Ironically the same people who are beating him up over this film were praising him last year over Cinderella Man. That was a good family values film and it was, I liked it a lot. I liked this one too.
By the way special mention should go to Audrey Tautou. She conveys an Audrey Hepburn like quality in her role and hopefully this will be a break out film for her.