Hey, everyone. Capone in Chicago here.
As I returned from my Wednesday morning, 10 a.m. screening of The Da Vinci Code this week, I immediately ran to my beloved AICN to see what my colleagues thought of the film only to be greated by Harry's message about a nationwide online press blackout. Oops. Selective enforcement is, indeed, a bitch. Here's my report about the (literally) snore-filled screening of the most scandalous, controversial, and divisive movie OF ALL TIME!!!! Ahem...read on...
Have you heard the rumors recently that there are, in fact, human beings on this planet who have not read or even touched a copy of Dan Brown's super-mega-best-seller The Da Vinci Code? Yeah, that would be me. It's not that I have anything against the book's popularity or Brown's writing style (which I'm told is fairly cinematic), and I certainly don't resent him for challenging the foundations of Christian doctrine. I've actually seen several films and read books on just this subject over the years. I just never got around to it. And by the time I thought I might get to it, the movie was on the verge of being released and I thought it might be better simply to see the movie as a movie rather than an adaptation.
The biggest benefit of not reading a book before the film comes out is that you avoid any preconceived notions about a film, such as whether Tom Hanks is rightly cast as hero Robert Langdon, a symbols expert on a book tour in Paris who suddenly lands in the middle of a myriad of mysteries regarding religion, murder and centuries-old puzzles. I'm not going to dissect the plot of The Da Vinci Code, partly because most of you probably know it already and partly because I don't want to give away too much to those of you who haven't read it (if you truly exist). Langdon and police cryptologist Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) are framed early on for various murders throughout Paris, but one of the victims happens to be Sophie's grandfather (Jean-Pierre Marielle), who has left clues in his own blood near the Mona Lisa and other Da Vinci paintings in the Louvre as to why he was killed.
Events in the beginning of the film are a bit scattered. Since Tom Hanks is Tom Hanks, we know he's the good guy, but we never really learn that much about who Robert Langdon really is other than the fact that he's claustrophobic. I really had to strain my brain as to whether that fact would figure in later in the film. The film's first sin is that past collaborators director Ron Howard and writer Akiva Goldsman (who won Oscars for A Beautiful Mind) aren't exactly subtle when laying out their plot. There's also a murderous, albino monk named Silas (a genuinely creepy Paul Bettany), who self flagellates with alarming regularity and ferocity. We also have Alfred Molina as Bishop Aringarosa, who heads up a secret society who is using Silas to retrieve…something very, very secret. It just so happens that Langdon and Sophie are after the same mystery object, and the race to unlock the many clues left through the years by some famous men of science and reason is on.
Despite the beautiful location settings and the clearly intelligent script, The Da Vinci Code feels like it's plodding along, barely taking a moment to do anything but solve one clue after another. Despite their being chased by everyone from the mad albino monk to the police (led by Jean Reno), I never really felt like Langdon and Neveu were in any real danger. But the bigger problem is Hanks' delivery. It isn't weighty enough. In fact, some of his lines will undoubtedly illicit unwanted laughter in theatres around the world. I would never in a million years believe there was a role that Tom Hanks could not handle, but he's out of his depth here, and I wasn't completely aware of it until Ian McKellen enters the picture as Sir Leigh Teabing, and old friend of Langdon's whose knowledge about all things related to the Holy Grail paves the way for our heroes to finish their quest.
No one can deliver crap dialogue with more gravitas than Ian McKellen; he is the master. We believe every word that comes out of his mouth, and when he speaks of the greatest lie in human history, your spine will chill. And while I wouldn't take out a single scene with McKellen working his magic, the sequence in which we first meet Teabing feels like cheating. This is a film about using your mind and knowledge of the world's secrets to solve age-old riddles, but in Teabing's first scene he spills out so many secrets and answers that it feels like cheating. Langdon and Neveu haven't earned this information; it's just handed over to them. Granted, almost nothing Teabing says about the origins of the Christian religion hasn't been said before in the real world, but it's all just dumped in our laps rather than given to us a piece at a time as the heroes collect these facts themselves.
As strange as it may sound (spare me the hate mail on this point), seeing The Da Vinci Code made me appreciate Kevin Costner's acting a lot more, specifically in JFK. In that film, Costner plays a largely unremarkable man who is surrounded by a legion of far more interesting characters, but without Costner's ability to read lines and be a stable force in the film, the other characters would have nothing to revolve around. Tom Hanks doesn't have that power, at least not here.
I don't know whether it's a flaw in his performance, in the writing, or in the direction, but he seems to fade into the woodwork too often in this film. He is strangely unremarkable (even with his long flowing man-locks) and ultimately the blame rests on his shoulders for sinking this film. And this might be the film's great revelation. Most of the remaining cast is solid, but when your support beam is weak, the whole structure comes crashing down.
Capone
