Starring:
Tom Hanks as Robert Langdon
Audrey Tautou as Sophie Neveu
and
Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing
Having read the book, I was totally looking forward to the movie reproduction ; ) Besides, with such a stellar cast... it is hard to imagine a disappointing performance!
The whole gin-gang of us (7 in all) Wai Kim and Huimin, Megan and Kelvin, Andy as well as Ho Wan and me, made our way to Tiong Bahru GV to catch this long-awaited blockbuster! Thankfully HW made tickets reservations two days in advance, so we were all looking forward to reasonable seats... Loaded with drinks, popcorn and nachos...we headed straight into the theatre.
On the whole, I would say that the process of the movie followed Dan Brown's novel to a "T".
The movie started on the exact same footing as the book with a museum curator being for dead on the floor with a strange pattern marked on his naked body and a death note asking for Robert Langdon to be found. RL was thus implicated and brought into the story with the French police assuming that he was the killer behind this gruesome crime.
Making an escape in a bid to clear his name and to solve the mystery behind this murder, RL is assisted by the dead curator's own granddaughter, Sophie Neveu.
They go on a treasure hunt to plenty of places, piecing together the incredible clues left by the dead man... it soon becomes all too aparent that the dead curator was no simple man...together with a secret society known as the Priory of Scion, they kept a secret that was birthed in the lifetime of Christ.
Cinematography was ok, nothing excessively artistic or brilliant like those of Zhang Yi Mou... really an action flick except for the excellent story script... since I had read the book, the whole movie was pretty predictable... going through the novel... I had been amazed each time they deciphered the code to the old man's clues... Brown's skill of unraveling the puzzles had your mind light up each time a new puzzle was pieced together...this 'bing' feeling was sorta lacking in the movie...perhaps due to a constraint in air-time...
The overall feeling was that they were rushing through the sequence to tell the story... much like a subway rushing through with the goal of just hitting the next station... it was hard to enjoy the process of rushing from between one station to another...
The chemistry between Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou was also so-so only... no sizzling passion there... in the novel... these two characters had a stronger sense of affinity...being brought together by the dead man's wish for them to solve the puzzle and protect his secret... in the movie...there was always the presence of a 'teacher-student' relationship...
The good thing about the movie is the visuals that you get... in the novel, you could only try to imagine the architecture of the various buildings described, the symbols, etc whereas in the building... you could actually see the visuals before you... aiding one's understanding of the significance of the various elements...
A worthy movie to catch in my opinon...but then again that's cos the novel is so good... to not lose out on anything at all...I'd suggest you catch the movie, read the book and watch the documentaries on it...fantastic storyplot!
One thing I don't understand though...the entire secret and controversy surrounding the novel was playing on the possibility that Christ had a wife and fathered a daughter...but erm... who ever made the rule that Christ could not marry, have a child and still be God? Any rules that immortals have to be celibate or like some fairytales...once you have any 'connections' with mortals, the immortal will lose his power? hmmnnn... Jesus was also God's son rite? Conceived through Virgin Mary, gifted through the Holy Spirit... Well, maybe I should try to read the Bible again.
