Let's face it, Langdon doesn't have an arc. Stage after stage of softly lit sacred sites that are presented simply to establish where the characters have been lead to solve their next puzzle piece than be emotionally reflective of the character's arc. So in comparison to his visual and tonal choices that leap out of the screen at you in works such as Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon or Rush, this Euro-thriller feels like it's been constructed to avoid stylistic flurry. No stone in subject or genre has gone unturned. Howard is one of the most versatile filmmakers working Hollywood. Thusly Goldman's script becomes a slowly paced conspiracy theory visual essay, with cripplingly laborious exposition. There would have been more controversy than the novelвЂ™s challenge of religious doctrine, would have been to deviate from the novel's best-selling narrative. In defence of screenwriter Akiva Goldsman and director Ron Howard, they were all but forced to slavishly adhere to the text during their adaptation of Dan Brown's pulp juggernaut. When Jacques SauniГЁre (Jean-Pierre Marielle), curator of the Louvre is murdered, he uses his final gasps of life to leave the clues for symbologist (a made up profession) Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) that lead him through the works of Leonardo Da Vinci toward a religious mystery protected by a secret society for two thousand years. What you'll discover is tantalising historical conspiracy presented like a university professor talking to pre-schoolers. One of the strangest things about The Da Vinci Code is how both the film and the novel seem to hold up spectacularly in your memory and in discussion until you have a lazy Saturday to throw it back into rotation.

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