I am – Hercules!!
So laughably derivative of “The DaVinci Code” (and more than a half-dozen other recent big-screen blockbusters), NBC’s new miniseries “The Last Templar” turns out to be more like The Last Template. A four-hour affair from veteran syndicated TV director Paulo Barzman (“Queen of Swords,” “Relic Hunter”) and Lifetime TV-movie writer Suzette Couture (“The Mermaid Chair,” “The House Next Door”), “Templar” is a dopier, blander, budget hybrid of “DaVinci,” “Tomb Raider,” “National Treasure,” “Romancing The Stone,” “The Perfect Storm” and the Indiana Jones franchise. It was produced by the two Robert Halmis, who had no fewer than 18 new projects on TV last year, among them SciFi’s famously awful update of “Flash Gordon.” “Templar,” based on the popular 2005 novel by Raymond Khoury, tells the tale of archaeologist Tess Chaykin (Mira Sorvino) as she races sinister Vatican forces to recover a manuscript reputed to reveal that the Bible is a giant pack of lies. Scott Foley (“Felicity,” “The Unit”) plays the religious FBI agent who, while investigating a horseback heist tied to the manuscript’s retrieval, teams with Chaykin on an adventure that takes them from Manhattan to the Mediterranean. The teleplay doesn’t engender much rooting interest in its characters, and you’d expect a reputable archeologist and an FBI agent to be a whole lot brainier than “Templar’s” protagonists. The one thing the project has going for it is always-dishy Oscar-winner Sorvino, who’s 41 and still fetching as she cavorts in khakis and cocktail dresses. Somebody should set Sorvino up in an ongoing series fast - but, please, not one from the folks behind “Templar.” Stick with pay-cable’s “Big Love” and “United States of Tara” on Sunday and “24” on Monday. USA Today says:

… NBC might have at least encouraged the folks behind this pulp-novel transfer to do something, anything, we haven't seen before, if only to throw us off the Da Vinci/National Treasure trail. … done in by being both too late and too long. At two hours it might have worked (see TNT's Librarian films). But you can't stretch a story this thin and absurd over two nights, especially when it's slow to start and slower to finish. You're just giving us too much time to consider what we've seen last and predict what we'll see next. …

The New York Times says:

… possesses the true Halmi signature: despite the fact that it’s packed like a sausage with banter and jokes both verbal and visual, it doesn’t contain a single genuinely funny moment. …

The Los Angeles Times says:

… Once you start mucking about with the Grail or anything remotely connected to the actual life of the man called Jesus, you can get into choppy waters. And unfortunately those waters swamp "The Last Templar." The action is too sword-and-sandal, the relationship between Tess and Daley far too adorably argumentative for the writers (Khoury and Suzette Couture) to decide, at the relatively last minute, to make "The Last Templar" a sanctimonious treatise on the nature of Christ and the importance of religious faith. …

The Washington Post says:

… a hackneyed, muddled mess that so wants to be "The Da Vinci Code" or "National Treasure" or any of the Indiana Jones movies and fails spectacularly all the way around. …

The Boston Globe says:

… a four-hour exercise in generic nonsense that wants to remind us of "The Da Vinci Code," when it's not mimicking "Romancing the Stone." But watching Sorvino and trying to reconcile her presence in this genre is perversely stimulating and, when her character, Tess, breaks a pair of Manolo Blahniks in a chase scene, curiously entertaining. Alas, the writers never give Sorvino a handy action-hero catchphrase; that would have been the cherry on this kooky sundae. … With two hours of air sucked out of it, the story - which also flashes back to medieval times - might have been fast-paced enough to distract us from all the plot glitches. But at four hours, you are left with far too much time to ponder the feebleness of the endeavor. …

Variety says:

… a mess of biblical proportions … Sitting through both nights will qualify not just as an act of faith but one that may approach self-flagellation. … Early on it's pretty clear the four hours won't contain a single original thought, down to gauzy flashbacks of the 13th century knights and dialogue that dictates that when Tess exclaims "Rats!," sure enough, her feet are surrounded by them.

The Hollywood Reporter says:

… after about an hour of jumbled storytelling and bizarre juxtapositions between the 13th century Latin Kingdom and 21st century New York, the prediction is you'll be less intrigued by the legend of the medieval Knights Templar than you will the prospect of catching up on your reading. …

9 p.m. Sunday and Monday. NBC.

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