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No taught, intelligent thriller here: 'Code' an insulting mess
"The Da Vinci Code" Running time: 149 mins. MPAA rating: PG-13 Grade: D
Most summer blockbusters don't require you to use your brain. All you need do is sit back, munch popcorn and enjoy the pretty people and special effects. There is one genre, however, where the viewer is expected to think: the murder mystery.
You follow the protagonist on the trail, picking up clues along the way. Because the murder mystery requires this level of mental participation, it is the director's job to make sure the plot is airtight.
Director Ron Howard must've forgotten all this because "The Da Vinci Code" is an insult to every audiencemember's intelligence. Knowing the popularity of Dan Brown's novel, I was expecting a taut, thoughtprovoking historical thriller. Instead, I got a profoundly stupid, lumbering film filled with characters lacking any depth or common sense. Let me give you two examples from the beginning of the film:
The curator of the Louvre is shot by the most inept assassin in Christendom. The old man - even though he is gut-shot and bleeding to death - has enough time to gallivant around the museum leaving anagrammatic riddles composed in his head and written in invisible ink (does he carry this pen with him all the time?), then strip off his clothes and carve a 2-foot-long pentagram into his chest and abdomen so he can die in a pose resembling a famous Da Vinci drawing. He does all of this because calling his police officer granddaughter (who is also a code-breaker) would have been too much of a strain.
No wait. It gets dumber.
Tom Hanks and the codebreaking granddaughter (Audrey Tautou) show up and spend an inordinate amount of time trying to unscramble the dead man's ciphers - because following the trail of blood leading to the clues of his killer would've been tres declasse for such a baroque murder.
And that's just the first few scenes of the movie. It doesn't get any better.
Honestly, just avoid this movie. If you read the book and enjoyed it, don't murder that feeling by subjecting yourself to this insulting mess.
(c) 2006 King Features Synd., Inc.
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