Director Ron Howard, in his film adaptation of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code, captures the essence of the novel in his 2:30 of allotted screen time. Once the final frame is projected on the screen, I uttered the same word that I did when I read the book about a year ago: meh.
The plot of this contrived thriller is actually fairly straightforward. Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is a religious symbologist from Harvard who is giving a lecture in Paris. When he is approached by Captain Fache (Jean Reno) about a murder in the Louvre, Langdon is pulled into a world of conspiracy theories, cover-ups, Christian fundamentalists, and ultimately ... the quest for the Holy Grail. Unfortunately, there are no Knights who say NI! in this quest, but instead, a lot of characters who like to use their screentime to spout hokum about everybody's favorite group of conspirators, the Knights Templar. In this quest, Langdon is joined by Sophie (Audrey Tautou), granddaughter to the murdered man in the Louvre, and eventually Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), an expert on conspiracies relevant to the plot. "Startling" revelations are made along the way, at least according to the music, but I won't go into any more plot details for the sake of staying at least mostly spoiler-free.
Tom Hanks is passable as Langdon, but he is not exactly who I pictured in the role and he does very little to make it his own. Audrey Tautou, Jean Reno, and Ian McKellen stand out in the scenes that they are in, with McKellen's Teabing getting a lot of throw-away one-liner jokes. Considering the action of the film is driven by dialogue, I guess this group of actors do their job fairly well. The protagonists are likeable enough, and the antagonists are sufficiently evil.
I'm sure a lot of people are interested in how the movie compares to the book. Well, to be honest, I don't remember a lot of what happened in the book ... not much seemed significant enough to stick. However, the film jogged my memories in quite a few places, so I'm guessing that it is decently similar. The real difference between the two comes in how the puzzles that the characters solve are portrayed. In the book, readers can move at their own pace and try to solve various puzzles and anagrams themselves. There is also the benefit in the novel of being able to dip into the characters' internal thoughts. In the movie, however, puzzles are presented and solved very quickly. When the process of solving the puzzles needs to be shown, Ron Howard dips into his repetoire for scenes that look like they come directly out of A Beautiful Mind.
In the end, this is a passable film version of what is, in my humble opinion, a mediocre book (from a literary sense). Both have entertaining aspects, though I'd give the entertainment edge to the novel just because of its level of detail. I'd guess that anyone who really likes the book will enjoy the movie. Those who have no idea what the book is about may have a hard time following what is going on.
Best use of on-location shooting: Filming at the Louvre
Quote to remember: You asked what would be worth killing for. Witness the biggest cover-up in human history.
Rating: 6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment