Movies Reviews
Movie Review: The Da Vinci Code
By Anne Brodie
May 18, 2006, 15:10 GMT

Early reviews from Cannes, where the much anticipated film made its world premiere, are vicious. The film is dull, wordy, too long, stodgy and grim. There’s no chemistry between stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Taotou.

It’s a failure!

But I beg to differ. Critics must be taken with a grain of salt here, following mind-numbing publicity including the Guinness record-breaking Da Vinci train ride from London to Cannes that has wallpapered our lives of late. That deluge alone would put critics in a mean state of mind.

But there is much to support the film version of Dan Brown’s spectacularly popular detective story. The balance of esoteric quest and car chase is more successful than in the book which seemed to discover there was a screenplay inside, if it could find a reason for squealing tires and the occasional righteous beat down.

The film finds its transition smoothly and naturally through Howard’s wary direction. He’s taken a big idea and compressed it into two and a half hours, ever mindful of Da Vinci’s unique cinematic problems and opposing milieus.

The script is remarkably clean, juggling a laundry list of facts and theories with emotional elements.

 If words trouble audiences, then this film may be avoided.

Explication is not offensive in a movie, even if the film is a thriller. DaVinci is a mental journey more than a physical one.

Howard has an eye for pomp and majesty and the bucks to do what he wants. He recreates ancient mythology in the film’s thrilling historical flashbacks. He uses some kind of gizmo wizardry to allow Robert Langdon’s (Hanks) thoughts to be seen in holograms and allow the contemporary characters to blend eerily into ancient flashbacks. It’s clever.

Don’t think any of that comes cheap. While the film is reported to have cost around $125-million, Howard has scrupulously put it where it belongs – on the screen.

Compare that to the bloated ‘Poseidon’ rumored to cost up in the$200-million range and which is of no use to man or beast.  That’s failure.

Chemistry: Hanks and Taotou are accused of lacking it. I would argue that when you’re thrown into a life and death situation with someone, you don’t have to fall in love and seal the deal. That would be lazy, formulaic habit.

Their chaste and academic relationship is entirely appropriate. I know we like a little slap and tickle with our thrillers, but this is not one of those stories.

He kisses her on the forehead. End of story.

Is Langdon gay or is he simply respectful of a woman who is far younger and emotionally fragile?

Don’t know, don’t care.

The story is their intellectual journey, not boy meets girl. He may be her lost grandfather or parents, but not her lover.

Hanks has been accused of sleepwalking through the Code, but as an academic, the mind’s the key. It’s a still kind of thing.

Thrills came to him, he never asked for them. Reason is his weapon and the journey is the completion of an academic theory.

Ian McKellen as the Grail scholar and Paul Bettany as Silas, the albino monk offer bravura performances, the backbone, symbol and reason for the ancient battle.

Bettany has a little of Hannibal Lechter under the monk’s robes, and suffers from a perpetual, haunted terror. McKellen is the film’s humour and heart – for a while – and makes it okay to laugh.

So, does Dan Brown know the secrets of the Grail?  Does he believe what he wrote?

 Should we? 

Prediction – bans around the world are free publicity and that’s no secret.

Wide international release day and date May 19, 2006   MPAA rating PG-13 for disturbing images, violence, some nudity, thematic material, brief drug references and sexual content.