The Da Vinci Code

Will Opie’s cinematic translation of Dan Brown’s daffy theological scavenger hunt satisfy its millions of devoted fans? Our best guess is that if the novel floated your boat, then the movie will too. At two and a half hours, the film isn’t exactly succinct, but screenwriter Akiva Goldsman (A Beautiful Mind) has trimmed a fair amount of flab from the plot while preserving all the key set pieces. Much of the book’s clumsy expository dialogue remains, but here it’s enlivened by bleached-out historical flashbacks of pagans being worshipful of nature, knights being chivalrous, witches being drowned, etc.

For us, half the fun was keeping track of all the punches being pulled to appease tetchy Catholics and evangelicals. In the book, for example, swashbuckling academic Langdon (Hanks) and his mentor Sir Leigh Teabing (McKellen) are both true believers in the historical conspiracy theory that drives the plot; in the movie Langdon is a skeptic who qualifies Teabing’s assertions as “just theories.” Later Langdon puts in a good word for Christian orthodoxy by urging French cryptologist Neveu (Tautou) to keep an open mind about the divinity of Jesus. The movie also attributes Grail-related evil deeds throughout the ages not to the Vatican per se but to a conspiracy called the Council of Shadows operating without sanction from inside the Vatican, see? It’s nice to know you don’t have to be a Jesuit to make Jesuitical distinctions.—Cliff Doerksen