A murder inside the Louvre, and clues in Da Vinci paintings, lead to the discovery of a religious mystery protected by a secret society for two thousand years, which could shake the foundations of Christianity.
Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon works with a nuclear physicist to solve a murder and prevent a terrorist act against the Vatican during one of the significant events within the church.
When Robert Langdon wakes up in an Italian hospital with amnesia, he teams up with Dr. Sienna Brooks, and together they must race across Europe against the clock to foil a deadly global plot.
The true story of Captain Richard Phillips and the 2009 hijacking by Somali pirates of the U.S.-flagged MV Maersk Alabama, the first American cargo ship to be hijacked in two hundred years.
Director:
Paul Greengrass
Stars:
Tom Hanks,
Barkhad Abdi,
Barkhad Abdirahman
The story of Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger (Tom Hanks), an American pilot who became a hero after landing his damaged plane on the Hudson River in order to save the flight's passengers and crew.
NASA must devise a strategy to return Apollo 13 to Earth safely after the spacecraft undergoes massive internal damage putting the lives of the three astronauts on board in jeopardy.
During the Cold War, an American lawyer is recruited to defend an arrested Soviet spy in court, and then help the CIA facilitate an exchange of the spy for the Soviet captured American U2 spy plane pilot, Francis Gary Powers.
When a man with HIV is fired by his law firm because of his condition, he hires a homophobic small time lawyer as the only willing advocate for a wrongful dismissal suit.
Director:
Jonathan Demme
Stars:
Tom Hanks,
Denzel Washington,
Roberta Maxwell
Dan Brown's controversial best-selling novel about a powerful secret that's been kept under wraps for thousands of years comes to the screen in this suspense thriller from Director Ron Howard. The stately silence of Paris' Louvre museum is broken when one of the gallery's leading curators is found dead on the grounds, with strange symbols carved into his body and left around the spot where he died. Hoping to learn the significance of the symbols, police bring in Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), a gifted cryptographer who is also the victim's granddaughter. Needing help, Sophie calls on Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a leading symbolized from the United States. As Sophie and Robert dig deeper into the case, they discover the victim's involvement in the Priory of Sion, a secret society whose members have been privy to forbidden knowledge dating back to the birth of Christianity. In their search, Sophie and Robert happen upon evidence that could lead to the final resting place of the Holy ...
France's Culture Ministry granted permission for limited access for the crew to film inside the Louvre at night. See more »
Goofs
The Rosslyn Chapel where the Priori filed in, the keyhole is empty, note the light streaming through it. The next scene is the door being shut and the key is already in the lock. See more »
Quotes
[first lines]
Silas:
Stop now. Tell me where it is.
[removes hood]
Silas:
You and your brethren possess what is not rightfully yours.
Jacques Saunière:
I... I don't know what you are talking about.
Silas:
Is it a secret you will die for?
Jacques Saunière:
Please.
Silas:
As you wish.
[cocks gun]
See more »
Crazy Credits
No opening credits are shown after the title of the movie. See more »
Alternate Versions
The film was originally shown to the UK censors in an unfinished form, with a temp score and sound mix. The BBFC advised Sony Pictures that sound levels during some acts of violence may be too impactful for the requested "12A" rating, so the film was likely to receive a 15 classification. When formally submitted, the final levels of sound effects on the completed soundtrack had reduced the strength of some acts of violence to an extent which made the film able to get a "12A" rating. See more »
La Javanaise
Music by Serge Gainsbourg
Lyrics by Serge Gainsbourg
Performed by Serge Gainsbourg
Courtesy of Mercury Records France, a division of Universal Music S.A.
Under Licence from Universal Music Enterprises See more »
From the way the critics have gone after "The Da Vinci Code," you'd think that Ron Howard himself had been jealously guarding the location of the Holy Grail all these years and was just now revealing it to all the world for his own nefarious (i.e. commercial) purposes. Actually, despite all the critical hostility and rancor, this turns out to be a reasonably entertaining adaptation of a reasonably entertaining novel, far from a classic or a work of art, but hardly the pile of cinematic refuse so many of the reviewers have led us to believe it is.
As a work of history, the novel is a passel of nonsense, and only those with a bent towards conspiracy theory overload would be foolish enough to believe a minute of it. But as a work of imaginative fiction, "The Da Vinci Code" certainly gives its audience the neck-twisting workout they've paid good money to receive.
It would be pointless to reiterate the plot of a novel that has probably had the biggest readership of any literary work since "Gone With the Wind." Suffice it to say that a mysterious murder in the Louvre sends a Harvard symbologist and the dead man's granddaughter on a clue-driven search for the famed Holy Grail. Along the way, the two uncover a grand conspiracy on the part of a renegade Catholic order to protect a secret that, if it were revealed, could shake the whole of Western civilization down to its very foundations.
Despite the phenomenal - one is tempted to say "unprecedented" - commercial success of his work, Dan Brown is no great shakes as a writer; his characters are, almost without exception, drab and two-dimensional, and his dialogue, when it isn't being overly explicit in pouring out explanations, sounds like it was written by a first-year student in a Writer's 101 workshop. But the one undeniable talent Brown does have is his ability to knit together a preposterously complex web of codes and clues into an airtight tapestry, and to make it all convincing.
The movie is very faithful to the novel in this respect. It moves quickly from location to location, never giving us too much time to question the logic (or illogic) of the narrative or to examine the many gaping plot holes in any great detail. Writer Akiva Goldsman has encountered his greatest trouble in the scenes in which the action stops dead in its tracks so that the characters can lay out in laborious detail the elaborate story behind the clues. Yet, this is as much the fault of the nature and design of the novel as it is of the man given the unenviable task of bringing it to the screen. Moreover, perhaps in the interest of time and keeping the action flowing, Robert and Sophie come up with solutions to the myriad riddles much too quickly and accurately, with a "Golly, gee, could it mean_______?" attitude that borders on the ludicrous. But, somehow, Howard makes most of it work. Perhaps, it's the clunky literal-minded earnestness with which he approaches the subject that ultimately allows us to buy into it against our better judgment.
Tom Hanks is stolid and passive as Dr. Robert Langdon, the college professor involuntarily driven into all this cloak-and-dagger intrigue, but Audrey Tautou has a certain subtle charm as Sophie, the woman who may play more of a part in the unraveling of the mystery than even she herself can imagine. Jean Reno and Paul Bettany have their moments as two of the less savory players in the story, but it is Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing, an expert on all things related to the Holy Grail, who walks off with the film. His scenery-chewing shtick pumps some much needed life into a tale essentially populated by underdeveloped stick figures.
The religious controversy surrounding both the novel and the film is as ludicrous as it is unjustified. Anyone whose belief system could be seriously shaken by this absurd mixture of unsubstantiated myth-making and plain old-fashioned wild speculation couldn't have had a very solid foundation of faith to begin with.
The rest of us can appreciate "The Da Vinci Code" for what it is, an overblown but epic exercise in code-busting and clue-decoding - in short, the "Gone With the Wind" of whodunits.
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From the way the critics have gone after "The Da Vinci Code," you'd think that Ron Howard himself had been jealously guarding the location of the Holy Grail all these years and was just now revealing it to all the world for his own nefarious (i.e. commercial) purposes. Actually, despite all the critical hostility and rancor, this turns out to be a reasonably entertaining adaptation of a reasonably entertaining novel, far from a classic or a work of art, but hardly the pile of cinematic refuse so many of the reviewers have led us to believe it is.
As a work of history, the novel is a passel of nonsense, and only those with a bent towards conspiracy theory overload would be foolish enough to believe a minute of it. But as a work of imaginative fiction, "The Da Vinci Code" certainly gives its audience the neck-twisting workout they've paid good money to receive.
It would be pointless to reiterate the plot of a novel that has probably had the biggest readership of any literary work since "Gone With the Wind." Suffice it to say that a mysterious murder in the Louvre sends a Harvard symbologist and the dead man's granddaughter on a clue-driven search for the famed Holy Grail. Along the way, the two uncover a grand conspiracy on the part of a renegade Catholic order to protect a secret that, if it were revealed, could shake the whole of Western civilization down to its very foundations.
Despite the phenomenal - one is tempted to say "unprecedented" - commercial success of his work, Dan Brown is no great shakes as a writer; his characters are, almost without exception, drab and two-dimensional, and his dialogue, when it isn't being overly explicit in pouring out explanations, sounds like it was written by a first-year student in a Writer's 101 workshop. But the one undeniable talent Brown does have is his ability to knit together a preposterously complex web of codes and clues into an airtight tapestry, and to make it all convincing.
The movie is very faithful to the novel in this respect. It moves quickly from location to location, never giving us too much time to question the logic (or illogic) of the narrative or to examine the many gaping plot holes in any great detail. Writer Akiva Goldsman has encountered his greatest trouble in the scenes in which the action stops dead in its tracks so that the characters can lay out in laborious detail the elaborate story behind the clues. Yet, this is as much the fault of the nature and design of the novel as it is of the man given the unenviable task of bringing it to the screen. Moreover, perhaps in the interest of time and keeping the action flowing, Robert and Sophie come up with solutions to the myriad riddles much too quickly and accurately, with a "Golly, gee, could it mean_______?" attitude that borders on the ludicrous. But, somehow, Howard makes most of it work. Perhaps, it's the clunky literal-minded earnestness with which he approaches the subject that ultimately allows us to buy into it against our better judgment.
Tom Hanks is stolid and passive as Dr. Robert Langdon, the college professor involuntarily driven into all this cloak-and-dagger intrigue, but Audrey Tautou has a certain subtle charm as Sophie, the woman who may play more of a part in the unraveling of the mystery than even she herself can imagine. Jean Reno and Paul Bettany have their moments as two of the less savory players in the story, but it is Ian McKellen as Sir Leigh Teabing, an expert on all things related to the Holy Grail, who walks off with the film. His scenery-chewing shtick pumps some much needed life into a tale essentially populated by underdeveloped stick figures.
The religious controversy surrounding both the novel and the film is as ludicrous as it is unjustified. Anyone whose belief system could be seriously shaken by this absurd mixture of unsubstantiated myth-making and plain old-fashioned wild speculation couldn't have had a very solid foundation of faith to begin with.
The rest of us can appreciate "The Da Vinci Code" for what it is, an overblown but epic exercise in code-busting and clue-decoding - in short, the "Gone With the Wind" of whodunits.