The Da Vinci Code Dazzles the Box Office

Can you say controversy? Can you say $77,073,388 in one weekend? If so, you’ve probably seen or heard about Sony’s release of The Da Vinci Code starring Audrey Tautou, Tom Hanks, and Ian McKellen. While based on Dan Brown’s best selling novel, the film is much more palatable and less controversial than the book. However, it definitely has the fast-paced, hanging-off-the-edge-of-your-seat thrills of the original.

Both versions involve a murder of the curator of the Louvre who reaches out to his estranged granddaughter and an American Professor on the day of his death. He leaves a cryptic message for the two to solve which leads to a quest to find the Holy Grail. Most of the way, the pair are chased by Parisian police and the French version of the FBI. An unknown enemy called the Teacher also makes a play to find the Grail, sending a ruthless albino monk after them.

Stunning locations are brought to life in this film from the Louvre to Temple Church to the hold of an armored truck as Professor Robert Langdon (Hanks) and Agent Sophie Neveaux (Tautou) dash around Paris and London in search of a mysterious keystone which will unlock the secrets of the Priory of Scion, a society protecting information pertaining to the Holy Grail.

While the characters are a bit livelier in the novel than in the film, McKellen does a superb job of convincing us that he’s an obsessed, eccentric, semi-reclusive scholar who will use any means necessary to obtain the Holy Grail. Though the portrayal is slightly melodramatic, McKellen alone is a great reason to watch this film. It is interesting and highly amusing to watch the actor go from the all powerful Magneto—or the brilliant wizard Gandalf—to an aging scholar with polio hobbling about trying to solve the greatest mystery of the last two millennia.