While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is informed that the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. Solving the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is seemingly stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Leonardo Da Vinci, clues visible for all to see, and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.
Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu who learns that the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion, an actual secret society. In a breathless race through Paris, London and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless power broker who appears to work for Opus Dei, a clandestine, Vatican-sanctioned Catholic organization believed to have long plotted to seize the Priory's secret.
Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's secret, and a stunning historical truth, will be lost forever. Sign In. Edit The Da Vinci Code Jump to: Summaries 6 Synopsis 1. The synopsis below may give away important plot points. Getting Started Contributor Zone ». Edit page. Ron Howard wouldn't have been my first choice and his team-up with Akiva Goldsman lacks a coherent story. There was opportunity but sadly I found this tiresome and muddled.
I'm going to view the next films due to myself checking out the books in comparison, so look out for my next reviews. Brendan O Super Reviewer. Dec 28, Based off the best selling novel by Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code garnered a good deal of controversy upon its theatrical release as it did when the book was first published.
The Catholic church in particular took great offense to the idea of Mary being Jesus' wife and the idea they had children together. The film presents them as such empirical truths and with such manner of fact that it just rubs anyone with differing beliefs the wrong way. Still, if you can understand it's a work of fiction and leave it at that, you should be able to get past this and simply take it as a fictional work.
While the book itself overcame it's controversial origins and became a best seller with critical reviews mostly positive, the dulled down scripted theatrical remake has done the exact opposite. The script and dialogue is lazily written and everything is spelled out for the viewer bit by bit and with nothing left to the viewer's imagination. You basically can't even put together your own theories because one of the characters is quickly telling you exactly what is what throughout the film.
The theatrical version is around two and a half hours with the extended version just shy of three hours, and this certainly doesn't help the matter. The whole film just barely trudges along and really drags throughout the film's overlong running time with Tom Hanks and Ian McKellen delivering the only positive thing, their acting.
There are a few action sequences scattered throughout but they are lackluster at best and never really get exciting or give the viewer any really sense of danger and dread like better thriller films do. Like most other literary adaptations, The Da Vinci Code just doesn't live up to the book and was hastily put together without any real care given to it, despite it's talent.
Director Ron Howard is also a very hit or miss director and this is certainly not among his best works, such as Cinderella Man or A Beautiful Mind. What is frustrating here is the potential and the talent involved and yet we come away with a mediocre film that fails to deliver a grand scope and thought provoking story. As a rental, it should keep first time viewers interested enough to not doze off, but for repeat viewings it can be a real slog to get through.
Chris B Super Reviewer. Aug 06, Film adaptations of bestselling books are very often rushed, sub-par affairs. When a book becomes a bestseller, being widely advertised and talked about everywhere, the pressure is often on to make the film quickly, before the hype begins to fade and chances of a big opening weekend are dashed.
Directors often react to this tight tournaround by slavishly reproducing on screen the words that are on the page, resulting in works like One Day and the first two Harry Potter films which don't use cinematic storytelling effectively to justify their stories outside of their hype. You'd like to think that Ron Howard, one of the most successful and populist directors around, wouldn't fall into this trap.
He is, after all, the man who produced a cracking drama in Apollo 13 despite sticking rigidly to the in-flight transcripts of the Apollo crew. Having turned his talents to subjects as varied as mermaids, firemen and mathematics, you wouldn't bet against him being a dab hand at the theological thriller. But whatever the appeal of its source material, The Da Vinci Code is a total clunker. Like so many of its predecessors, any discussion of The Da Vinci Code has to begin with a dismissal of the religious hysteria surrounding it.
It's certainly not the first film that's drawn the ire of the Catholic Church, and based upon said church's ridiculous response, it won't be the last. We are dealing with an organisation which stationed nuns outside screenings of The Exorcist in America, sprinkling paying punters with holy water as they went in and giving them support numbers to call on their way out.
By calling for a boycott of the film, the Catholic Church or individuals and elements therein played completely into the hands of both the filmmakers and the church's critics. Such a gesture, on whatever grounds, serves to paint Christians as thin-skinned sheep, seeking to shut down a debate which they should be having and encouraging.
The smart thing that any Christian should have done then, and should do now, is to give the film a fair run, if only so it can prove how ridiculous it is, and then use it to start a dialogue that potentially could open up the Gospel to people for real.
The claims of Dan Brown's book have been comprehensively dispelled by numerous authors and documentary filmmakers, with even sections of the church pointing out inconsistences and misappropriations in his work.
There is no evidence at all that Jesus had a physical bloodline, or for a physical relationship with Mary Magdalene, or for the existence of a Holy Grail, whether physical or conceptual.
But even if any one or more of these were true, to worry obsessively over them is to miss the point, focussing on superficial matters rather than the deeper truth of Christianity. Of course, from a filmmaking point of view, it doesn't matter in the slightest that Brown's ideas are fanciful beyond belief. Many films have used bizarre, apocryphal or just downright silly aspects of religion to tell a gripping story and often illuminate a deeper truth.
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade has very little basis in historical fact, but it's still a powerful statement about faith and the dangers of placing material gain before spiritual fulfillment.
Likewise, The Last Temptation of Christ speculated on Jesus having sexual relationships, but it used this provocative idea to explore temptation, desire and the burden the Messiah faced during his time on Earth.
The most illuminating comparison here, however, is with The Ninth Gate, Roman Polanski's preposterous lates thriller about a gateway to demonic power contained in books.
While its initial premise was promising and its first ten minutes forbidding, the film quickly descended into a quagmire of plot holes and poor special effects, culminating in a totally botched ending. But while The Ninth Gate sees Polanski showing contempt for both his audience and the material, The Da Vinci Code commits the far lesser sin of well-meaning incompetence.
The first and biggest problem with The Da Vinci Code is that it treats its audience like idiots. Every single detail of the plot is spoon-fed to us as if we are incapable of joining the dots ourselves. While there is a lot of terminology to deal with, and therefore some exposition can be justified, having actors do nothing but explain the plot does not make for compelling drama.
A related problem is that the film takes itself far too seriously. Any theological thriller worth its salt has to acknowledge the suspension of disbelief needed to accept its ideas, or at least must offer something on a structural level to keep our attention if we can't. But while Last Crusade could be enjoyed as both a big adventure and a moral insight, The Da Vinci Code demands that you take it seriously and comes out all the more po-faced and boring as a result.
Brown did the production no favours in this regard, claiming that "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals are accurate. Instead, the expository tone and grave delivery of the actors robs us of any thrills and reduces the whole thing down to a drudging lecture. This drudgery is reflected in the visuals. But whatever sharpness and brightness he brought to those productions has been replaced here with dimly light, poorly-composed scenes where the actors and camera barely move.
It's no wonder that Mark Kermode's natural response was to scream "turn the light on! The one genuinely enjoyable scene in the film comes when Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou drop by the house of a grail expert, played by Ian McKellen. This is the one part of the film where Howard allows his actors to unspool freely and relax into the sillier aspects of the plot.
While the arguments being put before us are still complete hokum, it's watchable hokum and it actually feels like the plot is going somewhere. But once that scene is over, it's back to the pompous and ill-informed conspiracies for what feels like another seven year. The performances in The Da Vinci Code are bafflingly below-par.
Even if Hanks' terrible haircut can be tolerated, he still spends most of the film stumbling from scene to scene totally confused, like it was his very first film. Tautou has none of the grace or joie de vivre that she showed in Amelie, coming across as annoying and out of her depth. Paul Bettany is wasted in a role that becomes meaningless when played dead straight, and Alfred Molina is largely phoning it in.
Only Ian McKellen gets the room he needs to express himself, and we miss him whenever he's not on screen. The Da Vinci Code is a dismal and disappointing thriller that is more insulting for its poor scripting than its theological pretentions. Howard's direction is utterly lacklustre, most of the cast seem puzzled as to why they are there, the script has very little nuance and the whole thing is far too grim and serious.
If you want a serious examination of Christian theology, this is definitely not the place to come. The only thing this film can produce is boredom or unintentional hilarity. Daniel M Super Reviewer. Oct 27, The writings were rejected by early church fathers because they did not correspond with the clear teachings of the 27 other books that were already being considered as the canon of Scripture. Brown claims that the church knew of more than 80 gospels, but only chose four.
The Nag Hammadi Library published in is considered one of, if not the best resource on biblical and extra-biblical history. This library lists a total of 45 titles, and not all of them were gospels. Another collection, The Gnostic Scriptures by Bentley Layton has just short of 40 works, only three of which have the title gospel. Many of these overlap the same works in the Nag Hammadi list.
At best, there were 60 works, and the strong majority were not gospel accounts. Yes, but not for the reasons that Brown proposes. He claims that these extra writings defined Jesus as merely a man and not divine. That is simply not true. As honest seekers study the question, " Is the Bible true? In the book, Brown claims that the core beliefs of Christianity had not been formulated until the time of the Council of Nicaea in the fourth century.
This is a strange claim since the New Testament books give a clear understanding of orthodoxy and core beliefs. By the time of the Council at Nicea in A. The council came together to affirm what the bishops and church leaders had been teaching for years. In fact, Paul asserted to the deity of Jesus almost years prior to the Nicene Council and Constantine. The Pastoral Epistles 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus are incredibly clear about what constitutes true salvation and sound doctrine.
Study for yourself: Is Jesus God?
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