The Da Vinci Code

As an avid fan of word games and puzzles it should come as no surprise that amongst my favorite movies is The Da Vinci Code. The movie, directed by Ron Howard, is based on the book of the same name by best-selling author, Dan Brown.

Suspected of murdering the elderly curator of the Louvre Museum, Jacques Sauniére, played by Jean-Pierre Marielle, American symbologist and Harvard professor Robert Langdon, played by Tom Hanks, is brought to the crime scene under the pretense of assisting Captain Bezu Fache, played by Jean Reno, from the Direction Centrale Police Judiciaire, the French equivalent of US's FBI.

Sauniére's lifeless body was discovered in the Museum's Grand Gallery. Before having died, the curator had removed his clothes and positioned his body as an exact duplicate of Leonardo Da Vinci's most famous sketch, The Vitruvian Man. On his stomach Sauniére drew a pentacle with the blood seeping from the gunshot wound he had sustained. Alongside the body was scribbled "13-3-2-21-1-1-8-5, O Draconian devil! Oh, lame saint!"

Unaware of Fache's suspicions, Langdon receives an urgent message from police cryptologist Sophie Neveu, played by Audrey Tautou, that he should call the US Embassy. The message as it turns out is a sham and instead Langdon receives a prerecorded message from Neveu explaining that he is in danger and should say nothing more to Captain Fache. As soon as Captain Fache's true intention for contacting Langdon becomes apparent, Langdon and Neveu, set out to solve the curator's murder.

Searching for Sauniére's murder places Langdon and Neveu in the midst of a centuries-old conflict within the Catholic Church between the Vatican's Council of Shadows, who's main objective is to seek out and kill all descendents of Jesus Christ and the Priory of Sion, the guardians of the descendents of Jesus Christ.