If I had to sum THE DAVINCI CODE up in one word, it would be lackluster

Rating: 2/10 (19 May 2006)

If I had to sum THE DAVINCI CODE up in one word, it would be lackluster. It's the kind of movie that will have its defenders. But for the most part, they will be defending Dan Brown's Novel, not Ron Howard's movie. It's not that the film is incompetent. It just doesn't try hard enough. It sits there never quite compelling you to do anything but watch it. It's a thriller with very little thrills.
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), Harvard University's most gifted Symbologist, is in Paris giving a lecture on his new book. When he is accidentally thrown into the middle of a murder investigation, in which he is the prime suspect. His only allies are Sophie Neveu, the murdered man's granddaughter, and Sir Leigh Teabing, an eccentric Brit with a passion for the holy grail. Langdon must outrun an over zealous police chief (Jean Reno), a psychotic Albino Monk (Paul Bettany), and a mysterious man called only The Teacher. In the process he stumbles over the biggest mystery of our age: just what is the Holy Grail? Director Ron Howard does his best to keep us interested in the story. It's been simplified and changed drastically from the source material, probably so that modern moviegoers can grasp the material a little easier. The thing that surprised me most about the changes in the story, were how they dramatically changed Robert Langdon's character motivations. The Langdon of Dan Brown's famous novel is an expert in the Grail symbology and goes as far as to defend it to Sophie. In the film he plays more of the Devil's Advocate questioning more and going as far as to call most of it bunk. This changes the end of the film dramatically taking a bit of real passion out of it. In essence you're left with a postmodern twist on the story that zaps a lot of meaning out of the plot.
Screenwriter Akiva Goldsman script shies away from the controversy of Dan Brown's book, it feels as if the producers sensed a boycott and got cold feet. I think it hurts the film. Honestly, if your going to court controversy you should jump full in. If not you've lost the battle. Now I wished I hadn't slaved through Brown's book. The film doesn't fill you with much desire to read the book it's based on.
On a purely cinematic level it fails because it's not all that compelling. None of the characters are drawn full enough for you to care about them. They are lost in a film that has a point A and a point B, but the journey to get there is paved with boring car chases, fake drama, sloppy gun play and incredibly stilted reveals. No one seems to have any honest motivation, and problems are solved but not explained. For instance Langdon and Sophie have this thing called a cryptex, they need to solve a code to get a piece of paper out of it. But instead of showing us how Langdon figured out the code it just jumps to him solving it.
My favorite moment was when Langdon and Sophie need to get to a library to figure out a riddle. In Dan Brown's novel they spend hours in a library, in the film Sophie borrows some random guy's cell phone and they figure it out on a bus. I chuckled.
All in all THE DAVINCI CODE is the kind of movie that's made to cash in on one of the most popular books in recent history. Its got star power, its got a big name director, its got a giant budget. But it's missing a human touch. It's missing a central heart. It's not a film about people. It's a film that just sits there and then fades to black. Amidst the controversy, amidst the hype, the boycotts, and the millions it will rake in at the box-office THE DAVINCI CODE is much "ado about nothing."