by Brian Murphy

YEAH YEAH YEAH, THE BOOK WAS BETTER

Leonardo da Vinci is one of the baddest human beings to walk the face of this earth - period. His contributions to the arts, military, technology, science, medicine and religion have benefited society greatly. Although da Vinci did ground breaking work in a variety of fields, it is his 31 x 21 inch oil painting of the Mona Lisa that the virtuoso will forever be remembered by.

Fast forward 498 years later and it is the subject of one of the most popular fictional tales in recent times, Dan Brownʼs, The da Vinci Code. This book was read, discussed and debated about at every Starbucks across the country. The super fast-paced, page-turner, was a must read for the habitual book reader and the novice alike. The da Vinci Code crossed all genres and had a nation captivated with its blurred line between fiction and nonfiction.

When The da Vinci Code merged into pop-culture, the studios came-a- knockinʼ, as it often happens. Knowing that the novel would eventually become a movie, I had particular actors in mind while reading the book (Harrison Ford as Langdon). There has never been a time when I wished I was part of the movie making process more than when I heard ʽCode was in pre-production. I knew they would get it all wrong and when I heard that Ron Howard was tagged to direct it, I thought "hmmm, I like this guy, but I just donʼt see the fit for this movie."

And on a warm summer evening, opening night at the Bridge in Culver City, my fears and concerns were confirmed. The da Vinci Code, just did not live up to what I was hoping it to be. I really did not expect too much more. The challenge of putting 560 pages into what is usually between 110 and 125 pages of a screenplay can be quite difficult. In all fairness to the screenplays scribe, Akiva Goldman, the movie stuck very close to the book itself.

The biggest problem that I had was the pacing. The book was so fast-paced and a mile a minute that you really needed that same cadence to transfer to the big screen. I felt like I was on the run in Brownʼs novel, but in the movie the pacing left me kind of, well...bored. I know Tom Hanks is considered to be a great American thespian and that is fine and dandy, but Mr. Hanks just did not do it for me as Robert Langdon. Usually I am a big fan of casting non A-listerʼs in movies, but Audrey Tatou as Agent Sophie Neveu was too flat a performance for a female opposite.

On the positive side, I was quite happy seeing Jean Reno as Captain Bezu Fache. Renoʼs performance in the "Professional" still stays with me. I will chalk one up in the win category for Howard, for casting Paul Bethany as Silas, dude was scary. As far as the transition of books to movies go, I will have to give The da Vinci Code a passing grade. Yes they made the standard omissions and added a few elements that surely were not in Brownʼs masterpiece, but that is par for movie making course.