Bad as both an adaptation and a Stand-Alone Movie

Rating: 5/10 (23 May 2006)

The Da Vinci Code is probably the most anticipated blockbuster so far this year. Based on the obscenely popular novel by Dan Brown, this movie features two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks in the role of Robert Langdon, a symbology professor at Harvard who is suddenly called upon to solve a centuries old mystery. It doesn't work. The movie is a flat-out disappointment - poor in comparison to the book, and poor as a stand-alone film.
The movie opens with Paul Bettany, one of the two shining acting jewels in this film, in the role of Silas the monk, hunting down Jacques Sauniere in the Louvre. Immediately following this underwhelming scene, we are shown Silas whipping and inflicting self-torture, managing to incur more sympathy than Tom Hanks himself.
It is revealed that Jacques Sauniere, in his final moments of death, set up a clue for his niece, Sophie, and Robert Langdon, to follow. Right from the get go, it is clear we are supposed to think of Sophie and Robert as a sort of erstwhile couple, yet Tom Hanks and Audrey Tatou do not share nearly enough chemistry to makes this believable. Hanks' brilliant career has earned him two Oscars, yet in this film his talents are wasted. He plays the symbologist professor as a cardboard cutout who merely exists to get them to next clue in the puzzle. They set off on the trail, figuring out each subsequent clue as if it where nothing more than a Blue's Clues show.
The film is slavishly faithful to the book - as if Howard was afraid that anything taken out would diminish its taut, tense quality. Yet it is precisely Howard's inclusion of every mundane detail that makes the movie seem so dull at times. The movie would have vastly benefited from being cut down to 110 - 120 minutes. It's two and a half hour running time is half an hour too long.
Another problem is how badly the action of the book is for action on the big screen. The character's long explanations of the clues in the book worked because reading is quite a different experience from viewing. In the film, the characters talk over history channel style grainy flashbacks. It is as if the audience can't be expected to listen to a character talk without some sort of action going on in the background.
Eventually Langdon and Sophie meet Leigh Teabing, an eccentric old scholar who knows more than anyone alive about the mystery of the Holy Grail and the Priory of Sion, a secret society dedicated to guarding the location of said object. Ian MacKellen's acting of Teabing is the other bright spot in the movie. This is what makes Tom Hanks's acting so disappointing. Admittedly, the character development in the novel is threadbare, and nonexistent in the movie. Yet that does not mean that Hanks could not have given Langdon a little bit of life. Hanks plays him as this dull history professor thrust into action which he immediately takes to like a duck to water. There is no moment of extreme surprise on incredulity, from him OR anyone else, in the entire movie. They just slip into their action hero jackets and plough straight ahead through the depressingly dull dialogue.
The controversy of the film is diluted as well, obviously to in some way quell the angered grumblings of a lot of Christians. Langdon is now a skeptic. It is hard to tell whether this helps or does not help the movie - though given the transparency of Hanks's character, it doesn't really make a difference at all. The Da Vinci Code has been talked about to death. Approximately 1897 TV specials have been done on it, and though it is still selling strong, the time for this movie to come out has passed. Besides Langdon's skepticism in the movie, everything else about the controversial message is there, but it just carries the air of, "who cares?"
Finally, the ending of the movie is the very definition of anti-climax. We are given a perfectly good climax - tense, taut, and fulfilling. Yet the movie goes on for another twenty minutes, dragging out every moment to the point of breaking. One of the final insults of the movie comes when Langdon attempts to summarize the supposed lessons he's learned. The lines are horrendously convoluted and make Langdon seem like a wishy washy wuss - he goes back and forth several times, never quite settling on what he has actually learned. And after that, we are treated to the final "HOLY CRAP" moment of the movie - which ends up working quite well, but is almost spoiled by an extra bit of camera-work that ends up feeling like a wasted bit of money.
The Da Vinci Code, in one word: disappointing. The acting, the story, everything. I was expecting a taut tense mystery thriller, but it came off as nothing more than a particularly dull detective story. The controversial message of it alone may make it interesting enough to be worth seeing in theatres, but that is not enough for a recommendation, at least not from me. If you want the controversial message, AND a good, taut, tense thriller, go for the book. It's a thousand times better.