Mini movie review — "The Da Vinci Code"

With my daughter staying the night at a friend's house last night, my wife and I decided to watch The Da Vinci Code for the first time. Thanks to donations from family members, I have had a hardback edition of the book, as well as an audio cassette version, for several years. However, I had become resigned to the fact I was never going to read either one, and that the movie version in this case would do just fine.

As a movie, Da Vinci works pretty well; it's suspenseful, and has an interesting narrative and subject matter. Plus, I like the idea of a symbologist as an action hero. The scenes illustrating his thought processes as he tries to crack a puzzle are pretty neat to watch.

An impressive stable of actors has been recruited here, and the performances are pretty solid throughout. Particularly enjoyable for me were the always-impeccable Sir Ian McKellan and the likewise first-rate Paul Bettany. Jurgen Prochnow was also enjoyable in his role, as was Alfred Molina.

That said, a lot of the plot twists were seen coming a mile off, both by my wife and myself, so there were few real surprises. Most alarming, it plays extremely fast-and-loose, and somewhat cynically, with church history. Some of the conclusions it takes are decidedly from a certain point of view, and, just based on my limited knowledge of the subject, it takes a cafeteria approach to both gnosticism and some of the so-called "missing" gospels. I'm no one's expert on that subject, but from where I see things now, it seemed as if they were taking a lot of things out of context to try to justify their conclusions.

So, overall, as a movie, I give it a solid B, but a theological and historical D-.