If you heed the advice given by symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) to Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou) mentioned in my summary line above, you should be OK. If you don't, you could get caught up in all kinds of conspiracy theories regarding what happened following the Last Supper and the Crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Some historians believe the chalice used by Jesus at The Last Supper to be the Holy Grail of Christianity, and I thought this was where the story was going. A cup is mentioned at one point but then it veered off in a different direction. The secret so many people were apparently willing to die for was to preserve the legacy of the human descendants of Christ on Earth, which could only have occurred if Jesus himself had a wife and family and the lineage survived up until the present day. The way the story relates this possibility is intriguing enough, but does tend to confuse with mentions of such occult entities as Opus Dei, the Priory of Sion, and the Knights Templar. The expert on all this was an enigmatic figure referred to as The Teacher, ultimately revealed to be Sir Leigh Teabing, portrayed by the always excellent Ian McKellen. The actor to watch in this piece is Paul Bettany, who's character Silas engages in self mutilation as a devotee of Christ; he's a truly chilling and scary character. There's probably not much middle ground for viewers of this picture, you'll like it or hate it based on the reviews posted here. Once it got under way, I approached it as a mystery thriller with religious overtones and didn't get caught up in the conspiracy angles. It holds a lot more intrigue that way.

So what's all the fuss about? Tom Hanks is a visiting American professor of Theology in Paris and Audrey Tautou is a cryptologist with the French police. Hanks is accused of murdering Tautou's grandfather and she believes him when he says he's innocent. The investigating detective, Jean Reno, has another agenda going as he's a member of Opus Dei.

The DaVinci Code is a murder mystery chase very much in the style of such Hitchcock thrillers as North By Northwest and The 39 Steps. It's not as good as those two, but not bad either. Ron Howard has made an entertaining enough film and should put a lot of money in his pocket with all the protests going on. As is usually the case, they're driving up the box office. You can't buy the kind of publicity that fundamentalist Christians are giving this film.

So what's the protest for? We've got a couple of secret religious societies protecting their secrets and killing a lot of people to do it. One of the secrets is that Jesus was in fact a very human soul who did human things such as get married to Mary Magdalene and have a daughter. Supposedly she went to France with her child and is in fact buried in France. And there are descendants walking around today.

The novel by Dan Brown certainly was well received and sold millions of copies. But folks it is when all is said and done, a NOVEL. It's a work of fiction from an imaginative author, nothing more. In fact at the very beginning of the opening credits it says that the movie is taken from the NOVEL by Dan Brown.

Ron Howard will need several Brink's Armored cars to haul away all the profits he will make with The DaVinci Code. Ironically the same people who are beating him up over this film were praising him last year over Cinderella Man. That was a good family values film and it was, I liked it a lot. I liked this one too.

By the way special mention should go to Audrey Tautou. She conveys an Audrey Hepburn like quality in her role and hopefully this will be a break out film for her.

This was much better than I expected, and it is far from the worst film ever made. My dad loved the book, and he thinks the film did it justice, and at 17 I liked it. Though with all the different views on Christianity and the complicated plot, it is confusing and convoluted. The dialogue is a little clunky, the violence like the whipping quite disturbing, and the direction perhaps too leisurely. But this is compensated by the splendid locations, especially Paris itself, and the music by Hans Zimmer was very nice, if not his best work. The acting was pretty decent, though all have given better performances, and this includes Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou in the leads. Jean Reno and Paul Bettany are pretty solid, but it is Ian McKellan, who is a great actor and rarely disappoints in anything he's in, who gives the best performance of the film. All in all, a good film, though it could have been better. It was cleverly constructed though confusing, and it is nowhere near as bad as people make it out to be. 7/10 Bethany Cox.