Review of The Da Vinci Code (2006) by David C — 13 Aug 2012

This is a servicable enough adaptation, but like many others, the book is of course far better.

Robert Langdon is a symbology professor who gets called into a criminal investigation that gets him wrongfully implicated. On the way to figuring things out for himself, he begins a quest to discover the truth about the Holy Grail, the details having some very shocking revelations.

I really liked the book. It's a standard thriller sure, but it's so well written and thought provoking. In the end, you need to just put personal beliefs aside (same here) and just accept it as riveting and entertaing fiction. Even though it is just fiction, the details of the truth behind the Holy Grail are so well argued that Dan Brown's ideas actually do seem like a realistic and plausible scenario.

With this adaptation, it seems a little stiff, and more overly serious than the book, but it's mostly faithful, for the most. Some details had to be changed for time concerns, others for content, but the end result here could be far worse. I enjoyed this a fair amount when I first saw it, but in revisiting it, some of that has worn off, and the film's not as good as I initially thought, but it's hardly a failure. It's just not as gripping and suspenseful as the book.

The film is really well cast though, and their performances are better than average, especially those by Bettany and McKellan. The location shooting is good, the direction is fair, and having Howard as director ensures that the film has some decent clout and production values.

All in all, it's okay.