“In London lies a knight a Pope interred,
his labour’s fruit a Holy wrath incurred.”
I must admit I was a bit disappointed when there wasn’t actually a Pope in turd. Oh well.
My film ‘reviews’ are never particularly comprehensive but I feel I should at least make an effort on this one (as always, no spoilers)… Here goes then!
Is it any good? Sort of.
Perhaps I should mention, I’m not religious and I’ll happily admit my religious history knowledge is far from marvellous. I’ve never read The Da Vinci Code novel and have never had any great urge to.
The film then. Let’s start with the bad points:
It’s quite long. Saying that… it plods along quite nicely and never actually gets boring as such, but I did find myself looking at my watch a few times. The British Police come across as complete morons on a couple of occasions. There are also a few ‘oh, how VERY, VERY fortunate’ moments – which means the film lurches uneasily to different locations.
Tom Hanks is surprisingly emotionless throughout. So much so, that his portrayal of “I’m really happy to be here” is identical to his acting of “Help! Help! I’m in mortal danger!”.
The good points then:
There’s an awful lot of background information given, which builds the story quite nicely. It’s one of those films where you can probably benefit from a second watch to take it all in.
It’s not actually a bad story on the whole. It’s all quite a clever premise I think. Apart from Tom Hanks, the rest of the cast are pretty good. Sir Ian McKellen is much better suited to this than his role in X-Men 3.
Is it a dud? No, far from it. I think a lot of people are perhaps biased because of their religious views and are happy to dismiss it as piffle. It’s easier to do that than question their beliefs for a few hours. It’s certainly meatier than most of the Hollywood drivel that I’ve seen in recent years.
Oh, has it changed my limited religious opinions after watching it…? Nope.
It doesn’t tick anywhere near the right number of boxes for a *great* film, but it does tick a good few. 7/10.
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