(*: least, *****: highest)
Forget what any critic tells you its immetaial. The Da Vinci Code will go down in history as one of the most famous books of all time, there is no doubt about that. Leave aside the conflict with religon, just the thriller part, I doubt there will be another book that has gripped the attention of the reader. Now how do they take such a successful book and make it into a movie. To retain every essence of the book is clearly impossible… So why were critics so hard on the movie?
In my opinion the movie is as good as it will get… Change the director or the lead actors it would never get better than this. I believe Ron Howard and Tom Hanks gave it thier best and the product is just brilliant. How can we appreciate it? For starters dont compare it to the book (thats just unfair). The movie on its own is very good. I am still to find one person who has not read the book and said the movie is bad, what does that tell you?
Back to the review… The movie brings to life Dan Brown’s masterpiece… a time based thriller based on myths and places. The first 30 mins of the movie just zips by but after that it switches to nice pace where you can get to see ever clue and how they crack it. Towards the end the movie slows down to snail’s pace and you just feel like they are spelling things out for you.
Acting wise… Tom Hanks is brilliant… I dont care what anyone else says he played Robert Langdon the way I imagined Langdon will be. People hv called it wooden and stonefaced acting well… the charecter was Wooden and Stonefaced(For the record ppl who hv read Angles and Deamons a prequel to Da Vinci Code will know that Langdon has seen enough not to waste time with pointless expressions). Audrey Tautou was clearly the weak link in the movie and I would hv prefered a more experienced actor in her shoes. Paul Bettany was for me the actor of the movie… His performance surpasses any of his pervious movies and he was clealy the God-fearing Silas we read and feared. The rest of the cast did their parts well and nothing clearly stands out as a questionable performace.
For those die hard fans who felt thier favourite part was sacrificed well I felt like that too… the movie hardly mentioned the golden ratio(phi) Well I guess to do justice to the book they should hv made a mini series instead :))
Dont go to this movie expecting it to be as good as the book or even close, you will only return dissapointed. Treat this movie as a parallel version and you will probably not be that disappointed. Well the glass is always half full for me maybe thats why I liked it :)