Screenplay by Akiva Goldsman
Based on the Novel by Dan Brown
Directed by Ron Howard
“Each breath you take is a sin. No shadow will be safe again, for you will be hunted by angels.”
Here are my random observations about 2006’s first * ahem * blockbuster summer movie:
(1) Tom Hanks has been given the most hideous hairdo in movie history. The hairdresser should be taken out at dawn and shot!
(2) The French really really really seem to hate the glass pyramid addition that was added to The Louvre. They’re obviously insane, as it’s very fetching.
(3) The chase sequences are rather dull. Actually, they’re painfully dull.
(4) There is about as much chemistry between Tom Hanks and Audery Tautou as there is between oil and water.
(5) The screenplay follows the story almost to the letter…which means the script is as poorly constructed as the book…even down to ALL the info-dumps…this time with FLASHBACKS! Dan Brown continues to make us ALL suffer for his art.
(6) Paul Bettany is rather good as the creepy, blue-eyed, self-flagellating Opus Dei monk Silas…but I’m not sure that’s something to be celebrated…
(7) Sir Ian McKellan is the ONLY superb actor in this film. It’s worth money simply to watch him having a blast, chewing the scenery as only a true genius can — he puts the others to shame from the moment he appears on screen.
(8) All the London scenes simply made me more excited about my own impending return to England’s green and civilized land.
(9) The quiet climax, at the Scottish chapel, is rather nice: quietly underplayed, unlike the rest of the film.
And my final observation about the celluloid trauma that is The Da Vinci Code…
(10) When shaving…if you cut yourself, and the blood in the sink forms some kind of pattern, God is trying to tell you something…
…and he’s probably saying that you’ve wasted FAR TOO MUCH thought on The Da Vinci Code!
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