The DaVinci Code
Based on the Dan Brown novel, which everyone on the planet except me read, the DaVinci Code sparked a religious controversy not seen since The Passion of the Christ in 2004. The plot centers around a conspiracy to hide the fact that Jesus had a child with Mary Magdeline, and that line still exists today. It includes secret societies, car chases, crazy monks, and crooked cardinals.
The main character is Robert Langdon, played by innocuous Tom Hanks, an expert in ancient symbols and languages. He is summoned to the scene of the death of the curator of the Louvre in Paris. The man had killed himself and wrote messages in his own blood. The dead man's granddaughter, a police officer played by Audrey Tautou, knows Langdon id in danger, and helps him escape.
This sends them on a chase away from the police and into the world of intrigue and religious fervor. People are getting killed around the heroes, and it looks like the church is behind it. In their run, the heroes meet up with an English historian, played by Ian McKellen, obsessed with the search for the real Holy Grail, which isn't a cup, but the line of Christ. He helps Langdon, but in the end turns out to be the one pushing the church to finally quell the secret behind the Holy Grail. He is doing it to find the secret for himself, but it works against him.
In the end, Langdon and the girl find the Holy Grail, and it turns out to be closer than they thought.
Overall, the movie was a pretty engaging thriller, and I liked the religious angle played. The casting of Hanks and using director Ron Howard looks like a way to diffuse the already fervent controversy which surrounds the novel and movie, and it almost succeeds. The cast, however, is pretty top rate and works well teogether. Tautou, McKellen, along with Jean Reno, Paul Bettany, and Alfred Molina, make this movie definatly worth watching. For what its worth, its getting a 7.
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