 The
Da Vinci Code
Starring:
Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellan, Paul Bettany, and Jean
Reno
Directed by: Ron Howard
Soundtrack Review->
Buy
the DVD at 14.87 +available for pre-release ordering
DVD Features:
This DVD is loaded with entertainment.The Featurettes are indepth
and smart.
* Available
Subtitles: English, Spanish, French
* Available Audio Tracks: English (Dolby Digital 5.1), English
(Dolby Digital 2.0 Surround), French (Dolby Digital 5.1), Spanish
(Dolby Digital 5.1)
* First Day on the Set with Ron Howard Featurette: Director Ron
Howard introduces the film and the excitement of beginning production
at the Louvre in Paris
* Featurette on “The Da Vinci Code” author Dan Brown
* Featurette: A Portrait of Langdon
* Featurette: Who is Sophie Neveu?
* Featurette: Unusual Suspects - The international cast…Colorful,
memorable and frightening characters
* Featurette: Magical Places
* Featurette: Close-up on Mona Lisa
* Featurette: The Filmmaking Experience Part 1 - Includes a DVD
exclusive look at filming the last and revealing scene
* Featurette: The Filmmaking Experience Part 2
* Featurette: The Codes of "The Da Vinci Code"
* Featurette: The Music of "The Da Vinci Code"
* DVD ROM - "Da Vinci Code" Puzzle Game PC Demo
and extras special surprises await.
Review:
Bluntly speaking? The Da Vinci Code is wonderful entertainment
- murder, intrigue, historical "what-ifs," with cat
and mouse jet setting, complete with a creepy obsessive mentally
debilitated villain albino on a mission from god. Da Vinci's
a who dunnit hootenanny! All the elements are here, it's a proper
murder thriller directed by a guy (Ron Howard) with an eye for
translating black and white words to multi-chromatic storytelling,
with dollops of thespian tinged interpretations. Brilliant.
Sure,
the film is based on probably the best selling book since, well, the Bible, but
it is considered fiction - and damn good fiction. Now it's also a damn good film
too. Just enough of the book flows upon the screen to keep the both audiences
happy. And while many will call The Da Vinci Code the anti-Passion of
the Christ, director Ron Howard clearly stood strong and bravely kept theology
- the theme - at the center while the nucleus of a superb murder-mystery thriller
entertains and mystifies. Yes, frankly the film tends to stand on the side of
logic over faith - but that's its story - which you may recall sold (sells) in
the "fiction" section... Story
goes…. Symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is in Paris for a conference.
But, faster than you can say, "A pair of every animal species? Is that really
believ…" Rob is whipped into a murder mystery involving sacred secrets
and underground organizations (and cryptic symbols), that make the notoriously
mysterious jewel encrusted Maltese Falcon's lineage look mundane.
The Louvre curator has just
been murdered. But, it's no simple slaughter. He's been left naked, oddly positioned,
and apparently self-tattooed in a bloody symbol across his chest as a last breath
message ment to be a a visual hint (a cryptic puzzle) for the two people he believes
are worthy of discovering the answer: his estranged niece Sophie Neveu (Audrey
Tautou) and a stranger, world renowned symboligist Robert Langdon. We, as an audience,
see the murderer and the act. That's not what the dying man tried to say...he
is not important here… That's
odd. Why would a man use his last moments, not to identify his killer per say,
but to set off a kind of holy treasure hunt with the only two people (perhaps
in the world) that would understand his strange epitaph?
Off we all go into his wonderful
webbed world of clues and crypts, the devoted and Da Vinci, the bedeviled and
betrayed. Truths are adrift, maybe even lost or altered in time, as the befuddled
duo discover a heck of a lot more than expected, and ultimately unravel "the
con of man." At
the center of the con is a child, and that child holds many answers, many people
do not want told. There are a few that would even kill to stop the secret from
being discovered. Secret organizations abound right in front of you, and other
groupds we hardly know, which have always had a shroud steeped in mystery, are
twisted to the darker end of their doctrines in working towards this story's plot.
The characters here are clever and the story is riddled with wonderful tidbits
of wildly interesting deductions. The
Da Vinci Code is ultra-thought provoking. Faith is the strongest fuel known
to man. What if that faith was tested, or proven to be nothing more than grand
political manipulation designed by a disintegrating counsel in attempt to keep
order in an ancient multi denominational society? What if what many believe as
gospel was motivated by a congressional-like control, and simply based
upon a great prophet and his mortal biography, mixed with some of the
more popular pagan beliefs, and a bit of anti-feminism for good measure. The facts
of faith worked (revisioned) into a "new" religion with liberties taken
like a high paid, Oscar winning, script doctor? The Da Vinci Code hits
the heart on this matter. The
film is stellar. For those of you who stayed up that night and read Dan Brown's
book, you wont be disappointed. Not since Midnight in the Garden of Good and
Evil, has a film translated so fluently to the screen. A tale touching upon
a theory that Mary Magdelene is quite less then a "beguiling" prostitute?
Jesus as a mere man? That kinda thinking is sure to stir up a big ol' nest of
locus-n-controversy: look what folks did recently over a cartoon…
Those of you who love Jesus
(like me) and believe in the gospel, see the film - and remember it's fiction.
Faith is faith - perhaps this is your test.
Snack
recommendation. Vanilla wafers and red wine, while working
on a decopauged family-tree album.
Buy
it
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