isn't the best adaptation The Da Vinci Code fanatics could've hoped for, but a solid flick

Rating: 8/10 (19 May 2006)

rating: 3 out of 4
After nearly three years of putting it off, last week I finally picked up and read The Da Vinci Code. Being the 40,000,001st person to read the book wasn't much fun, as a dozen or more people giddily peered over my shoulder, asking what page I was on and oh-so-accidentally letting the twists slip off their tongues. I figured that since all the other 40,000,000 people who've read the book will view the film adaptation in a gnawing, nit picky book-to-film comparison, I probably should too. Trying to review a film from a perspective no one in the theatre will have has never been a winning stratagem. And Dan Brown's book was fun and riling, utilizing convincing art history and extremist theology to thicken its otherwise pulpy tale. As a film, its prospects were titillating: the damned thing was pretty much written to be a movie in the first place. But when put to practice, some key elements were lost in translation. Granted, Ron Howard is a more eloquent storyteller than Dan Brown, utilizing the language of film with more agility than Brown can maneuver the English language; but the script lost something along the way: for all its length, Mr. Howard's The Da Vinci Code has lost its scholarly charm.
Now don't go running off thinking Hollywood's done it again; this is a respectful adaptation that constricts its creativity to stay true to the worldwide literary phenomenon. What I mean is that Akiva Goldsman's adaptation seems to rush itself in some of the wrong places.
For those of you who're like me and have somehow avoided the book for the last years, here's a little synopsis: a respected curator for the Louvre is found dead with a mysterious smattering of clues surrounding his body. Symbologist and Cryptologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) and Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) track these clues down to their historical significance, tromping around Paris and London in search of the Holy Grail, the curator's controversial secret. Going any more in depth is a waste of print-space. I was the only person who hadn't read the book anyhow.
The finest moments of the novel, most will admit, occurred when Langdon and Neveu sifted through their encyclopedic knowledge in search of solutions to their international, multi-millennial treasure hunt. We were educated as they whittled down the answers, introduced to stifling theories and tasty little factoids. But with the film adaptation, Mr. Howard seems to skim over the puzzling aspects of the hunt. Answers seem to simply pop into the characters heads. Oh sure, every once in a while an anagram gives them a few seconds of trouble, but Mr. Sauniere's (the curator) brilliance is never properly honored. The trail he laid for the pair was intricate in the novel, laden with double entendres and charmed solutions. Goldsman's script doesn't have time for such nonsense, floating along past these magical moments of scholarly adventure and replacing them instead with other conversations lifted from the text that offer up disappointing substitutes.
Beyond this, however, I have no quibble with the project. Put simply, it's the moving picture version of the book we read, but without the clunky sentences. The best people in the business were put on this project and it certainly shows. Not only does Ron Howard prove yet again his careful command of the film medium, but the casting is also watertight. Mr. Hanks and Ms. Tautou strike the chord of off-kilter chemistry that Mr. Brown aimed for in his book, while the ghostly Silas is haunting and pathetic in the form of Paul Bettany. And yes, despite Hanks' much abused hairdo, his performance is the most respectful of all. He's just fine as Robert Langdon.
And there's no need to worry about the screenplay taking its own creative liberties. The one major change from the book is well handled and probably a better choice anyhow (it has to do with Captain Fache and Bishop Aringarosa). There are little things changed too, but only shifted to speed up Mr. Brown's otherwise sloppy action sequences. Instead of Sophie hitting the brakes and calmly driving away from the tightly guarded U.S. Embassy, she embarks on a wild, backwards car chase in the deeply congested streets of Paris. Ron Howard knows how to drive his film in these scenes, and his control of The Da Vinci Code is its winning token.
This isn't the best adaptation The Da Vinci Code fanatics could've hoped for, but it's a solid flick. The eloquence Mr. Howard delivers is a vast improvement over Mr. Brown's fumbling language, while Brown's adventure is undermined by Howard's slighting of the treasure hunt. This is a fair trade, sure, but it prevents both works from achieving greatness.