|
The Da Vinci Code
Reviewed by Rich Drees
Following the murder of a museum curator at the Louvre, Paris police
consult with Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) over some
mysterious symbols the victim made with his own blood. Langdon soon
discovers that the symbols point to a conspiracy to hide a secret
that could potentially undermine the very foundations of the
Catholic Church. Pursued by the Paris police, led by the determined
Captain Fache (Jean Reno) and an albino assassin (Paul Bettany)
working for a secret society out to destroy the secret, Langdon and
police detective Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) find themselves on the
run, trying to unravel clues to find the mysterious secret before
they are caught and killed by the pursuers.
For all its popularity as a breezy summer afternoon page-turner, the
film adaptation of The Da Vinci Code is anything but a
fast-paced thriller. Ron Howard’s oppressive direction gives an air
of inflated self-importance far in excess of what the material’s
pulp-ish roots deserve. Adding to the film’s ponderous nature is its
dark photography, which makes even daylight scenes look murky and
overcast.
It is not that the film is boring or slow, it is just that there is
no real feeling of building momentum to the movie. The early scenes
of Hanks and Tautou’s characters dashing from gallery to gallery in
the Louvre do contain a certain amount of energy, but this is the
only time the movie has any liveliness to it. A story like this
should just zoom along, with the characters on the run from the cops
and the various other groups trying to get them, with a sense of
dramatic urgency building as the danger mounts. Instead, Hanks and
Tautou’s characters just seem to amble along, with no real urgency
to their actions. The only real energy comes from Ian McClellan's
performance as Langdon’s mentor, probably because he knows not to
take the material as seriously as everyone else seems to be doing.
Another thing that undercuts the film is the sloppiness in which the
book was adapted to film. As the picture opens, we see the murder of
the museum curator intercut with Hank’s Langdon giving a lecture to
a packed auditorium after which he started signing copies of his
book for admirers. It is at this point that the Parisian police
approach Langdon to come with them to the Louvre where Reno’s
Captain Fache suspects him of the murder. If Fache is really the
smart detective the other characters seem to think he is, he would
never even begin to suspect that Langdon was the murderer, despite
being told so by his Opus Dei superiors, simply because Langdon has
an airtight alibi with several hundred corroborating witnesses. It’s
such a basic mistake – in the novel Langdon was picked by the police
late at night back at his hotel after he had been alone for a few
hours – made simply in an effort compress the story’s action that
undermines the film’s ability to generate any credible suspense.
Ultimately, The Da Vinci Code comes off as a missed
opportunity and one that compares unfavorably to another recent
film, National Treasure. National Treasure, for all
its flaws, still delivered a rousing adventure using many of the
same elements as The Da Vinci Code- academics attempting to
unravel clues to find a treasure that has been hidden away by a
centuries-old conspiratorial secret society. Instead, The Da
Vinci Code comes across as another Tom Hanks-starring literary
adaptation, 1990‘s The Bonfire Of The Vanities- an
over-wrought and over-long film that failed to capture the spirit of
what made the source material so popular. |
