The Da Vinci Code

After all the hype it’s really just a fun adventure movie let down by the mystic crap. Nice American guy and attractive French chick on the trail of the Holy Grail with a host of bad guys in chase.

They Say:

“a solidly-entertaining, slickly produced and gorgeously photographed movie.” – The Daily Mirror.

“Hardly the Devil’s work but nothing to be proud of, either” – The Independent.

We say:

And they said unto him: “Behold, Ron, thou shalt make an action movie with car chases and murders” and Ron thought that was good. Then they said: “Verily, thou shalt also fill it with theology, mystical tosh, loads of talking and stuff like that” and Ron said: “Chucks! Well a Hollywood Director has to do what a Hollywood Director has to do.”

And a pretty good job Ron Howard did of it too.

Not only could he afford to make this movie look magnificent but he knew how to do it too.
He looks to the world of the Bond movies with their grotesque and exotic villains – usually identifiable by their physical deformities or foreign accents. He adds to this something of Agatha Christie’s love of not very cryptic clues and good old-fashioned adventure movies like The 39 Steps.

Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is a semiotics professor – an expert in the bleedin’ obvious and Sophie (Audrey Tautou) is a police cryptologist – a clever police officer who can solve problems – surely a contradiction in terms. Hanks is the Gregory Peck of our times…somehow always coming across as real and decent as if he wasn’t really acting. Audrey Tautou too is very natural on screen succeeding in looking both intelligent and sexy at the same time.

All this is good fun – even the hammy performances of Ian McKellen as America’s favourite sort of tea-drinking English eccentric and Paul Bettany as the albino monk hit man who chats on his mobile in conjugated Latin.

But then there’s all that tosh about Jesus marrying Mary Magdalene and the centuries old cover-up that followed. It is not only preposterous but it’s also really boring because it all has to be explained at length. If only they could have cut the mystic crap.

Cert 12A

Starring:
Tom Hanks
Audrey Tautou
Ian McKellen
Paul Bettany

Director:
Ron Howard

Running time:
149 mins

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