THE DA VINCI CODE A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2006 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): * 1/2
If you believe that any joint collaboration between Tom Hanks and Ron Howard would have to be entertaining, you'd be so wrong, as THE DA VINCI CODE, a big budget bore, proves. Running a painfully long two-and-a-half hours, it turns a page-turner of a novel into a plodding and perfunctory production. The lifeless performances are all phoned in, and the cinematography is so dull and dingy that you'll swear they forgot to clean the camera lenses.
The book may not be great, but it does provide some absorbing and easy reading. The plot is convoluted and preposterous, but the book makes it seem just plausible enough to forgive its flaws. The movie, however, is baffling, boring and silly. Moreover, the more confused the audience gets, the less it cares. The big mystery about battling secret societies within the Catholic Church and about a big secret which will "shake Christianity to its very foundations" becomes increasingly ridiculous and tedious in the movie. One of the main characters is a mysterious albino monk (Paul Bettany) named Silas, who spends his all free time in self-flagellation, an activity which the movie finds so fascinating it insists we observe it again and again.
Hanks plays Robert Langdon, a famous religious symbologist who is in Paris to give a lecture and sign copies of his latest best seller. In no time, he finds himself accused of murder by a corpse who had written Langdon's name in blood on the floor in one of many notes the victim left in code before he died. Audrey Tautou plays Sophie Neveu, the dead man's granddaughter. In one of the most wooden performances of his career, Jean Reno plays Bezu Fache, a grim and humorless French detective with a hidden agenda who spends most of the movie chasing Langdon.
If you've read the book, as I had, or even if you haven't read it, as my wife hadn't, you'll eventually figure out most of what is going on among the various warring factions. Understanding and caring, however, are two different things.
The movie fails on just about every level possible. Only in a few nicely done musical moments, especially during the last of the film's many endings, is the movie ever briefly satisfying. At least Tom Hanks is able to keep a straight face when reciting cheesy and nonsensical dialog, such as, "This. This can't be this."
If the rest of the summer is filled with more blockbuster turkeys like THE DA VINCI CODE, the studios may need some divine intervention to save their continually sagging box office receipts.
THE DA VINCI CODE runs an excruciatingly long 2:33. It is rated PG-13 for "disturbing images, violence, some nudity, thematic material, brief drug references and sexual content" and would be acceptable for teenagers.
The film opens nationwide in the United States on Friday, May 19, 2006. In the Silicon Valley, it will be showing at the AMC theaters, the Century theaters and the Camera Cinemas.
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