A so-so that could have been better

Rating: 5/10 (11 March 2007)

Of all the films I've seen recently, this one has the most mixed reviews. I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie, so I tried to keep an open mind. What I saw was a film that was at times extremely well done and at other times, extremely mediocre. I found this film to be mostly uninteresting but sometimes thought-provoking. Maybe that's why it has so many mixed reviews.
This really isn't director Ron Howard's best work. To me, it really seems as if he has just followed a "how to" manual on making movies. Here is the movie in a nutshell:
1) There is a "shocking" scene. 2) The good guys find a clue. 3) The bad guys find the good guys. 4) There is a chase scene. 5) The good guys somehow barely escape. 6) The good guys stand/sit/walk/etc. and talk about what happened and what it means. 7) The good guys talk more about history and we see a little mini-movie while they talk about it. 8) Go back to step 1 and start over.
Repeat steps 1-8 until you've wasted 2.5 hours of everyone's time.
This kind of directing is just too tedious for my taste, and I really don't like movies that depend so much on dialog like this one does. I wish the director hadn't assumed the viewers were so stupid that all we could understand was chase scenes. I think it's insulting to the audience to have a film that has 5 minutes of visuals alternated by 15 minutes of discussion. Ron Howard seems to not understand one of the first rules of movie directing: you SHOW the audience what's happening instead of having the characters TELL the audience what's happening.
There are many things I liked about this movie, and many things I didn't like. But the bottom line is that this movie seemed to be about half-way done. It looks like a rough draft, not a final product. With a better script, better acting, and better directing, this could have been a fine movie. As it stands now, it's best left unwatched. Read the book instead.