The Da Vinci Code

Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou in a scene from the suspense thriller 'The Da Vinci Code'.

Herald rating: * *

Yes, the book was a real page-turner – one auditioning to be a screenplay at every one of its many short cross-cutting chapters.

Now it's got its wish and no doubt many of the some 50 million who bought Dan Brown's treasure hunt thriller of art and religious sort-of history will pay to watch Tom Hanks, his peculiar haircut and the gamine Audrey Tatou pursue those cryptic clues again.

But even more than the controversial, rip-roaring and inelegantly written book does, the movie comes with its own test of faith. For one thing, it's certainly long and tedious enough to try one's belief in films adapted from best-sellers and be found wanting.

So too is Tom Hanks as a leading man -- his Harvard professor Robert Langdon fails to leave much of an impression as the brains of this particular operation. Sure, he gets slightly breathless when displaying Langdon's inconvenient claustrophobia. But in the film's efforts to present him as a credible egghead he stops being his usual engaging self.

Tatou is, of course, far too cute to be true as Langdon's accomplice Sophie Neveu but she manages to give her character something resembling a pulse, as do some of the supporting players – especially McKellen whose performance as Holy Grail scholar Leigh Teabing gives his scenes an energy missing elsewhere.

Bleached boy Bettany captures the utter absurdity of the albino self-flagellating assassin monk Silas, who at times appeared to have escaped from a different and much scarier movie, or a heavy metal video.

Ever innocuous director Howard throws in multiple historical footnotes to the film, using effects-heavy flashbacks grey and grainy enough to make you wonder if Ridley Scott helped out, or ghostly apparitions showing the mists of time (or something) alongside the contemporary action.

There are departures from Brown's text, one quite marked one in its final revelation which feels more a time-reduction edit than desire to alter the story.

But for all its digressions into the past, nocturnal adventures and gothic locations, it remains a film remarkably free of atmosphere or sense of place. Or of pace – it starts off breathless as if it knows it's got a lot to get in, then reverts to a sluggish tempo which leaves one checking one's watch and mentally ticking off the chapters: Look it's been two hours, shouldn't we be at St Paul's by now?

Otherwise for a film about a search for the Holy Grail it's remarkable only for how tediously bloodless it all is. Oh well, there's always the Monty Python version ...

Cast: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tatou, Paul Bettany, Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Alfred Molina
Director: Ron Howard
Rating: M (medium level violence)
Running time: 153 mins
Screening: Village, Hoyts, Berkeley cinemas