The Da Vinci Code

Director: Ron Howard

Starring: Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Sir Ian McKellen, Paul Bettany, Alfred Molina

Ron Howard and Akiva Goldsman, the Oscar Award winning duo behind A Beautiful Mind, are reunited to produce this highly controversial thriller based on the world famous novel by Dan Brown. With an opening weekend second only to Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, this film has to be worth a look.

While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) receives an urgent late-night phone call; the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered in the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher and Langdon teams up with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), who proves to have a deep involvement with the whole scenario. Langdon is stunned to discover that the cipher leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci - clues visible for all to see, and yet ingeniously disguised by the painter. These clues reveal to Langdon that the elderly creator was involved in a secret society – The Priory of Sion, that harbours a secret capable of sending 2000 years of history into turmoil. In a breathless race through Paris, London and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who appears to work for Opus Dei - a Catholic organization believed to have long plotted the seizure of the Priory's secret. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's secret - and a stunning historical ‘truth’ - will be lost forever.

Fact and fiction are so heavily intertwined that the film has been the cause of great debate. Many parts of Catholicism and Christianity are depicted in anything other than a favourable light but as long as this is viewed as an amazing work of fiction and not a medium of truth, it provides an excellent, albeit slightly long movie.

Michelle Foy