A brave but failed attempt.

Rating: 7/10 (23 May 2006)

The book takes nearly 600 pages. The film lasts about 130 minutes plus who-knows-how-long in credits. So that there was plenty of time for the book to advance its theories and show how the codes were broken. But there just wasn't enough time for that in the film. So we were left with long periods of talk and inaction, then a few minutes of fairly over-the-top action to make up for it. Hence I felt that the film dragged. What did come over very strongly is the frightening belief that if a "believer" has different views from another "be-liever" but one with a different faith, then the second person is wrong  God hates him, and he deserves to be: framed for murder; killed, tortured  who cares? And if you truly believe in a certain God, then it's great to murder provided you also flagellate yourself and wear torture implements. But if you treat this film purely as fiction (which is quite likely what Dan Brown intended in the first place), then it lacks pace and surprise. By the way if Leigh Teabing really was the master criminal (or teacher) he had several opportunities to do what he did earlier on. The so-called climax and surprise identity of the teacher, was just wrong. In book as well as film. This film is advertised as 150 minutes. The credits started rolling at 130 minutes. I didn't time them, since I really have no interest in who supplied the donuts or did the washing up. But surely they didn't last 20 minutes!
(I kept hoping that someone would put a notice on the fridge saying: In fridge, in plastic box, next to the baked beans. That would have saved a lot of trouble.)