In the end, the reviews were mixed. Some seemed to enjoy Ron Howard's thriller, and some saw it as a badly written mess.
I remember being in the former. But the more hate I heard from it over time, I felt as if a re-visit was in order.
I managed to end up still enjoying it. It opens up with some interesting ideas on symbolism that sets us up for what could be in store. Then as more clues get unlocked and a new character is introduced, I remained fascinated and gripped by what the big revelation actually is. However the longer the revelations continue, the more divisive it may get and therefore may lost some of the audience.
But for me, the build-up to the final act peaked my interest and the crescendo was pretty satisfying.
That being said, I can see the faults a lot of people have been frustrated and even angered by.
The writing is certainly a disappointment, and yet I am not angered by it. A combination of spoon-feeding the information, and the author of the novel seeming to forget the use of the internal monologue does make the writing pretty poor. It is a shame that director Howard was almost too faithful to the writing.
Yes there is over excess of exposition that will annoy certain film fans. But I was fine with this as there is a lot of ground to cover in this particular film, and it would aid a lot of people unaware of the history of Christianity.
One improvement that I would have happily pushed, was to have more of an adventure tone to it, like in National Treasure for example. But obviously not as much as that, as there still needs to be some seriousness considering that the source material is about.
What did not help either was the delivery of these lines, and that conveniently moves us to the performances.
I can still say that there is not one bad Tom Hanks film that I have seen. His performance is not one of his more memorable ones. But it is still satisfactory enough.
Audrey Tautou did not seem to fit the role and felt mis-cast in the end. While her character is important, the performance did not match that. I was disappointed in the end, as I know she has been great in other films such as Amelie, Dirty Pretty Things and Priceless.
Stealing the show for me was Sir Ian McKellan. There was just enough eccentric in there and it pretty much fitted the tone perfectly. It was a shame no-one else could follow.
Paul Bettany did probably as well as he could have done with such an off character. It was certainly a great choice of casting as Bettany is one of the best actors around to be a supporting role. Sadly for Jean Reno, I felt he was very weak and could have been so much more memorable. He did not seem threatening at all for a character that should have been. There are not many performances from Reno that are worth praising that I have seen. Leon and possibly Mission: Impossible being the only ones.
The only other performance worth mentioning was Alfred Molina. He was massively under-used in this one. It felt like a waste of a good talent.
I am glad I re-visited this, as it further cemented my original enjoyment from the first viewing. While the beliefs of the film will not please everyone, the ideas certainly cause discussions. I have always been intrigued by religion and how much of it is true, if not all of it. That is probably why I found this a gripping watch. I also liked the tension. It was mounted really well and managed to pay off in the various climatic moments.
Rating: 7/10
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