So it’s here at last, the big hitter: The Da Vinci Code.
So it’s here at last, the big hitter: The Da Vinci Code. Ron Howard (Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind, Apollo 13) directing, Tom Hanks (you know the one) starring, Akiva Goldsman (Cinderella Man, A Beautiful Mind, Batman and Robin) adapting the book by Dan Brown. Millions of people have read the book; millions will see the film. Millions have been spent; millions will be made. It’s a serious business.
The plot, in case you’ve just dropped in from Mars, concerns an American symbologist named Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) who happens to be lecturing in Paris when a murder takes place at the Louvre. Langdon is brought to the scene by the French police and asked to decode the peculiar symbols which surround the corpse. Before he can make much progress, a young woman named Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) arrives to warn Langdon in secret that he is being framed. Langdon and Neveu feign their escape from the Louvre, drawing the gendarmes away, and then return to the crime scene and the coded messages. They realise that the murdered man, Neveu’s grandfather, meant to bring them together in order to set them off on a quest for the Holy Grail (hint: it’s not just a chalice). So, off they go.
Two and a half hours later, the quest is at an end — a fact for which I gave rightful thanks and praise. The script has remained faithful to the book, and I imagine that fans of the book, in their teeming millions, will love the film. Everything you need to love the film is in place: there’s a complicated plot bearing Grand Ideas, lots of rushing about for Langdon and Neveu, a decidedly unChristian monk hot on their tail, double-crossers on all sides, inept (and sinister) French police, Ian McKellen being charming — it’s all there.
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