The Da Vinci Code

Dang! Beaten to the punch by Parsons at work. Again!

Must strive to make my review different. I know! Change the font....

Right. The Da Vinci code.

Ignore what the film critics tell you about this film. They're wrong. Which means, ignore me, because I (like everyone here) am a critic, albeit for a small audience. Which means don't ignore me......

It's a strange name, given Da Vinci (and his work) feature only briefly at best. I hadn't read the book, and don't really intend to, but I thoroughly enjoyed it. This film is a lot darker than I was expecting, and I mean that in the literal sense. The film has less light in scenes that the trailers would have you believe. Tom Hanks' hair is nowhere near as distracting or annoying as I thought it would be. Maybe I was distracted by the lovely Audrey Tautou. Rowr....

The film starts with a murder and ends....well, I wouldn't want to spoil it for you. It does get a little sledge-hammery towards the end, but this is forgivable given the heavy (and rather wordy, by all accounts) nature of the source material.

The film is lovingly shot, which you'd expect from a Ron Howard movie. It also steals it's soundtrack from a previous movie. Again, something you'd expect from a Ron Howard movie. The soundtrack was a little too similar to National Treasure for my liking, and since they both feature references to the Knights Templar (and use quite similar flashbacks to their demise), I found I focused on this. That's just how my mind works though.

I think this movie suffers heavily from HarryPotter-ism. People who've read the book enjoy the film a lot less than those who haven't. I liked it.

Really?, you ask. Well, put it this way. I'm seriously tempted to go and see it again, and as you all know, I only do that with Star Trek movies, and the now infamous "Night Of Three Times" when I saw Galaxy Quest three times on the same day.

You'll enjoy it, as long as you accept it for what it is: a ripping yarn. It's not historical drama, it's a thriller. It's just, like all good thrillers, it's based on what could have happened.

I've also come to the conclusion that film critics don't know what the hell they're talking about. Which bodes badly for me, I guess....

OQ: '...s'il vous plait...'

Score: B+ It's a darn good movie, and I'll own it on DVD when it's available.

Trivia: As a piece of trivia, Paul Bettany was interviewed on Jonathan Ross and was how he felt working with Tom Hanks for the first time. "Well, the first day it was very nervous. I mean, he's never been in a Paul Bettany movie before..."

There is a small prize of 500 kudos for the first person to tell me how many words I've invented for the purpose of this review.

Mission Impossible 3

Bleugh!

That was pretty much my feeling for the film once I'd left. There's so much wrong with this movie, it's difficult to know where to start. But let's start with what's good with it.

It's better than MI2. This isn't really hard, as MI2 was the biggest pile of pants it's ever been my misfortune to sit through. It's better then MI1 as well, and as an action movie, it delivers. It's packed with action, stunts, breaking into places that are supposed to be impossible to break into. The usual stuff. It's very good on that, and if you can forgive it the plotholes and aren't a huge fan of the TV series, then I dare say you'll enjoy it.

The bad stuff: There's nothing new. Every piece looks tired and has a definite "seen it before" feel. Even the most action packed and exciting part, the ambush on the Florida Keyes bridges just smacks of the sequence from True Lies. There's just nothing original. And I feel cheated that we don't see how he steals the canister from the building.

The explosive charge in the head. Was it just me, or were other people expecting, I dunno....an explosion maybe? Zzzzapp and a head jerk?!? What a rip!

And the plotholes do annoy. Like breaking into the Vatican City. Where was the laser perimeter? The ultra-sonic detectors? The guard dogs? Hell, where were the ID badges? And looping the video! Talk about your cliché!

And the biggest plot point: the traitor in IMF. Every Mission Impossible film has had one of them. It's been the key turning point in all three movies. I just left thinking that IMF doesn't screen it's own agents before employing them.

I really wanted to like this film, given what people have said about it, I really did. And don't get me wrong, it is the best of the Mission Impossible films. But I'm a fan of the original TV series, and while I appreciate you can't translate it directly to the big screen (it would be unrealistic for Tom Cruise not to fire a single shot during the movie), I just don't feel it captured the feel of the show. The "big reveal" is missing, the use of the face masks has become a parody of itself and cutting between the characters while they work on a mission and having them say "30 seconds to bravo two" is NOT the same thing as seeing that chap who was always stuck in an air-duct, sitting in an air-duct fiddling with electronics and having to wait 15 minutes into the episode to know what the hell he's doing and why.

It's kind of like the difference between Murder, She Wrote and Columbo, I guess. Both from the same genre (same creators, actually) but they take radically different ways to tell similar stories.

Also, on a related topic: I have come to the conclusion that 12A certificates should be withdrawn and the 12 put back. There was a 7 and 4 year old watching this movie with their grannies, and anyone who's seen it will know why that's a worrying thing.

Score: C-

OQ: I honestly can't remember any.