Movie & Book Review: The Da Vinci Code

I started reading the book a week before it was released and did not want to put it down! I picked the villain easily enough and enjoyed all the twists and turns.

The movie was alright. I had a pounding headache when I went to see it, so that probably didn't help matters. I didn't think it was as gripping as the book, but I think they did a bloody good job. I'm not sure it deserves the bad reviews it's getting, but each to their own.

Plot: While in Paris on business, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon (Hanks) receives an urgent late-night phone call: the elderly curator of the Louvre has been murdered inside the museum. Near the body, police have found a baffling cipher. While working to solve the enigmatic riddle, Langdon is stunned to discover it leads to a trail of clues hidden in the works of Da Vinci -- clues visible for all to see -- yet ingeniously disguised by the painter.

Langdon joins forces with a gifted French cryptologist, Sophie Neveu (Tautou), and learns the late curator was involved in the Priory of Sion -- an actual secret society whose members included Sir Isaac Newton, Botticelli, Victor Hugo, and Da Vinci, among others.

In a breathless race through Paris, London, and beyond, Langdon and Neveu match wits with a faceless powerbroker who seems to anticipate their every move. Unless Langdon and Neveu can decipher the labyrinthine puzzle in time, the Priory's ancient secret -- and an explosive historical truth -- will be lost forever.