The Da Vinci Code (2006)

Directed by

Ron Howard

Genre

drama film, crime film, mystery film, treasure hunt film

Country

United States

Runtime

2h 29m

Rated

PG-13

Rating

6.7 of 10 from 10,145 voters

Elsewhere

IMDb

How it feels

A professor of religious symbols is accused of a murder at the Louvre museum in Paris. He teams up with a police cryptologist to unravel a secret code hidden in Leonardo da Vinci's artwork. Their search for the Holy Grail puts them in conflict with a secret religious group that wants to protect the truth.

suspensefulpuzzlingdarkfast-pacedintellectualmoodyconspiratorial

What happens

The Da Vinci Code is a 2006 mystery thriller film directed by Ron Howard, written by Akiva Goldsman, and based on Dan Brown's 2003 novel of the same name. The first in the Robert Langdon film series, the film stars Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Ian McKellen, Alfred Molina, Jürgen Prochnow, Jean Reno, and Paul Bettany. In the film, Robert Langdon, a professor of religious symbology from Harvard University, is the prime suspect in the grisly and unusual murder of Louvre curator Jacques Saunière. On the body, the police find a disconcerting cipher and start an investigation. Langdon escapes with the assistance of police cryptologist Sophie Neveu, and they begin a quest for the legendary Holy Grail. Sir Leigh Teabing, a noted British Grail historian, tells them that the actual Holy Grail is explicitly encoded in Leonardo da Vinci's wall painting The Last Supper. Also searching for the Grail is a secret cabal within Opus Dei, an actual prelature of the Holy See, who wish to keep the true Grail a secret to prevent the destruction of Christianity. The film, like the book, was considered controversial. It was met with especially harsh criticism by the Catholic Church for the accusation that it is behind a two-thousand-year-old cover-up concerning what the Holy Grail really is and the concept that Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene were married, producing a daughter, as well as its treatment of the organizations Priory of Sion and Opus Dei. Many members urged the laity to boycott the film. In the book, Brown states that the Priory of Sion and "all descriptions of artwork, architecture, documents and secret rituals in this novel are accurate". The Da Vinci Code premiered as the opening film of the 59th Cannes Film Festival on May 17, 2006, and was theatrically released in the United States on May 19. The film received generally negative reviews from critics, but was a commercial success, grossing $224 million in its worldwide opening weekend and an initial total of $760 million worldwide against a $125 million production budget, becoming the second-highest-grossing film of 2006, as well as Howard's highest-grossing film to date. It was followed by two sequels, both directed by Howard: Angels & Demons (2009) and Inferno (2016). (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)

Trailer

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