The DaVinci Code

Just saw The daVinci Code here last night. Amy's mom
watched the kids and allowed us to slip away for the
9:30 movie. (Odd getting out of a movie after midnight
and it still being bright daylight, but I digress.)

Anyway, spoilers abound here so if you don't want to
know anything about the movie, don't read any further.

I haven't read the book yet. Amy brought it back from
Anchorage last week and it took her all of two and a
half days to read it. Man, I wish I could read as fast
as she does. My comments are about the movie itself,
and I only know off hand information from what Amy has
told me about the book tonight.

First of all, I thought the cops seemed like complete
idiots throughout the whole thing. I thought it was a
disservice to the whole plot that could have been
handled with a much better cop. The movie did try to
portray the detective known as Vache as a man that was
almost too obsessive but I think that would have made
him tougher. I dunno--jury's still out on this one.

Secondly, there was a major plot element that made no
sense to me. After Amy explained how it was handled in
the book, it made a lot more sense. When they are all
in the Temple Church in England, Silas came in and
took Sophie hostage. Then comes in the servant/driver
of the cripple, Lee, who was played by Ian McKellen.
The servant/driver slaps Lee down and takes the
keystone. Not long afterwards, the movie tries to fake
out that the servant/driver is the Teacher, the man of
mystery behind the whole thing. All good so far, but
soon thereafter we learn that the servant/driver was a
pawn for the real Teacher and he ends up being the
cripple, Lee. What I don't understand is this: if Lee
and the good guys, Sophie and the Tom Hanks
characters, were already working with, why would Lee
set things up to steal the keystone? They would have
solved the puzzle together and opened the flipping
thing without Lee having to wave a gun and threaten
death unless they opened it. Lee should have played
along and after they opened the keystone and got the
map and then should have started waving guns around.
He could have taken the map then. Lee knew he was
going to need help with the flipping keystone because
they were playing around with it on the plane (and if
he was faking there, why would he have needed to wave
a gun at them to try to open it??). This area of the
movie just makes no sense to me. The betrayer picked
the entirely wrong moment to jump ship.

I did not like the camera work for the most part. A
lot of erratic camera jostling seemed to be the norm.
Now, I understand the chaotic filming during the
really cool car chase scene. I understand the
fuzziness of the flashbacks. That was all good. Some
of the normal scenes seemed erratic. However, Amy gave
me a wonderful reason for this: maybe it was to
increase the tenseness of the movie. I did feel tense
during most of the scenes I was supposed to. That is
extremely plausible. That may be one of those
subliminal ways a camera can get to the audience.

All in all, I thought it was interesting. I loved
Silas the flagellant monk character. It started fast
and never let up, which I extremely liked for a movie
that was almost three hours long. I was able to follow
it and was very interested as to where it was going.

I just can't get past that one plot point of taking
the keystone too quickly. For all that this character
knows and does and how flamin' smart he is, he
wouldn't have done it. The book supposedly did much
better on this. I am off to read the book.