What can you do when the book is already pure genius?

Rating: 8/10 (23 May 2006)

Ron Howard's movie Da Vinci code received a lot of flack early on by critics saying there was no flow to the movie and there was no connection between Tom Hanks (Langdon) and Audrey Tautou (Sophie). However, I beg the differ, and give, if not, more credit to Howard for not slaughtering the already genius and Best-selling story.
One of the hardest tasks in film-making, is the one of taking a very successful book with a huge following and transferring it to the big screen. We have seen few successes with this (Jurassic Park, Lord of The Rings, etc.). Dan Brown's book, Davinci Code, already contained a great story which captivates and draws in the reader. Ron Howard has the task of trying to unite everyone's imagination into one movie by also not trying to offend anyone of different perspectives. Indeed, I do agree that it was less descriptive, but it took me 1 month to read the novel, and the movie is about 3 hours.
Tom Hanks performs well as always, however I think a slight miscast on casting him as a knowledgeable Professor. There is good flow to the movie and we are not drowned by long slews of dialog explaining every detail of Da Vinci's work as well as the Templar Knights. I believe Howard did a good job of extracting the essentials and tying them in for the audience to grasp the principles of the book. I am sure for those who have not read the book, and only saw the movie, consider it one of the best of the year. Howard continues to earn my respect and deliver good, entertaining movies.