An opportunity missed

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2006)

"The Da Vinci Code" has been a publishing phenomenon. Even before the film version appeared, the novel had been translated into 44 languages and sold an utterly amazing 40 million copies. Rarely then has a film been so anticipated by millions and then so panned by virtually all the critics. In truth, I had hoped that this would have been one of those very rare occasions when the movie would prove better than the book because the novel contains some interesting plot elements but is appallingly badly written. Sadly I have to record that the critics are right and my hope has been dashed.
Tom Hanks, as the American professor of symbiology Robert Langdon, sports a strange haircut and speaks as if he has a cold, while gamine Audrey Tautou, as French cryptologist Sophie Nevue, struggles somewhat with her first English-speaking role and accomplished actor Jean Reno - here playing the policeman in charge of the murder investigation - is underused. Only Ian McKellen, in a rather camp and breathless performance as the Holy Grail expert Leigh Teabing, really impresses.
I had thought that the movie might soften the portrayal in the book of the Catholic Church and more especially the Opus Dei organisation and that it would ease back on the self-punishment inflicted by the albino monk Silas, but there is no sparing of Catholic sensibilities here. Indeed the film is remarkably faithful to both the substance and the style of the book - and this is mainly what dooms it to such tedium. The movie, like the novel, has little characterisation, is excessively wordy, and concludes in a limp and most unsatisfactory manner.
Director Ron Howard and producer Brian Grazer can do much better than this ("A Beautiful Mind" and "Apollo 13"), so I blame Dan Brown. He wrote the book, he was executive producer on the film, and he even supplied a bit of the music and some extra codes. The film look quite good - with location shooting in places like The Louvre - and sounds good too - with music from Hans Zimmer - but it is too long (two and half hours), too dense, and poorly written and paced. In spite of these serious flaws, I suspect that the movie will still do well enough to recoup its considerable investment and will push the novel back to the top of the best-seller lists because so many people have a restless urge to see patterns and meanings and conspiracies even when there are none.