‘Da Vinci’ entertains; ‘Break-Up’ cracks

Is the world’s oldest Christian church hiding a secret that could cause the foundation of Christianity and Western civilization to completely crumble?

That’s the question driving “The Da Vinci Code,” a suspenseful cloak-and-dagger thriller reminiscent of the films of Alfred Hitchcock.

But “The Da Vinci Code” doesn’t have Hitchcock’s brilliant art direction, and there are times when the story has to beg the audience to suspend disbelief, but overall this is an entertaining movie. It’s not cinematic genius, and it’s not director Ron Howard’s best work, but it is a nice piece of escapism.

I hate spoilers, and there aren’t any in this review.

The story follows Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a professor of religious symbology at Harvard University. For reasons he doesn’t know, Robert finds himself sucked into a dangerous world ruled by underground Catholic religious sects that he always believed were fictitious.

When the movie begins, Robert is pulled out of a lecture he’s giving to Parisian scholars and asked to help the French police interpret some unusual symbols left at a crime scene. The curator of the Louvre was found murdered in the museum. His body is naked and posed like Leonardo da Vinci’s drawing “Vitruvian Man.” There’s a coded message written beside the body and a pentagram drawn on its stomach in blood.

At this point, we are asked to believe that at the time of the murder, the entire security staff of the world’s most famous art museum had left, and that all of the museum’s security cameras were turned off.

I have no problems with the story as a whole, but missteps like this are frustrating. And this isn’t the only one.

As Robert looks over the cryptic message next to the curator’s body, he discovers that the French police intend to accuse him of the murder. He soon finds himself caught in the middle of a life-and-death struggle involving a secret that the Catholic Church has guarded since its inception: While Mary Magdalene watched Jesus’ crucifixion, she was carrying his child.

On one side of the struggle are the Opus Dei, a shadowy Catholic sectseeking to destroy all evidence of a bloodline connected to Jesus. On the other side is Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), granddaughter of the Louvre’s murdered curator. Because Robert is a total outsider, he is the only one she can trust to help her discover why her grandfather was murdered. In turn, he needs her help to prove his innocence.

Robert and Sophie are constantly hunted as they attempt to unravel the truth. Their predators are relentless and unyielding. Behind every twist and turn lurks deception and betrayal. Each riddle they solve leads to more questions and more riddles.

When you boil the story down to its essence, “The Da Vinci Code” is really just a new twist on the old Cold War spy thrillers. Robert and Sophie are ordinary people who find themselves caught in the middle of a secret war. You could easily substitute the KGB for the Opus Dei, and microfilm for Jesus’ family tree.

The stories in those old spy movies were concocted by taking a kernel of truth, and then wrapping it in a cornucopia of fiction. That’s exactly what Dan Brown did when he wrote the novel on which the film is based. There are a couple of moments when the story drags a bit, but overall it’s entertaining, and things move along at a pace that’s fast and engaging.

Ron Howard deserves a lot of credit for keeping a very complicated story completely in focus. The run time of 150 minutes may seem a bit long for this kind of movie, but all of the plot twists need time to completely unravel themselves.

Tom Hanks is one of the best screen actors in Hollywood. Other actors might have played Robert Langdon like a two-dimensional intellectual action hero, but I enjoy watching smart-guy heroes use their barely constrained rage to make up for not having giant biceps, like Harrison Ford does in the Tom Clancy movies. Hanks doesn’t play Robert like a comic book character. He’s not especially angry, just vulnerable and confused. He’s an ordinary guy caught in the middle of extraordinary circumstances.

Likewise, it’s difficult to picture anyone but Audrey Tautou playing Sophie Neveu. Tautou is sensual, but without being inappropriately provocative or distracting. She’s fascinating to watch, but she never overpowers the story.

The great cast includes other heavy hitters such as Ian McKellen, Jean Reno, Paul Bettany and Alfred Molina. The players are what make this movie entertaining and well worth watching. The casting is perfect.

Aside from some painful inconsistencies in the story, “The Da Vinci Code” is a creative new twist on an old genre. This is definitely better than a lot of the current choices in theaters. Unless you’re dying for a night out, my advice is to wait until this one hits the dollar theater at Warner and Beach. It will also make for a good DVD rental.