Written by: Susan Granger
www.susangranger.com

Dan Brown's controversial novel has sold some 60 million copies, spawned rival non-fiction books about the Holy Grail, and launched tours through the Louvre, churches, chateau and monuments mentioned in the plot. It's also inspired this heavy-handed film.

Theoretically, director Ron Howard and screenwriter Akiva Goldsman should have been in their element with this secretive, biblical thriller but something went awry.

As the story begins, Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks), a Harvard professor of religious symbology who is lecturing in Paris, is summoned to the Louvre after the murder of the museum's curator, Jacques Sauniere, and discovers he's detective Bezu Fache's (Jean Reno) prime suspect. Sauniere's grand-daughter, cryptographer Sophie Neveau (Audrey Tatou), helps him escape and, together, they seek to find the real culprit, following a series of cryptic clues left by Sauniere. So begins a dark, foreboding treasure hunt, filled with codes, anagrams and puzzles, leading to the Holy Grail, as revealed by Langdon's old friend, Sir Leigh Teabing (Ian McKellen), a crusty, cynical scholar who postulates that Mary Magdalene was pregnant with Jesus' child at the time of the crucifixion and that the Holy Grail was not his chalice from the Last Supper but his French bloodline.

Terrified that this revisionist history, involving Jesus' humanity and the importance of women in the early Church, might be revealed are members of a secret sect, Opus Dei, who dispatch a murderous, self-mutilating monk (Paul Bettany) to kill them.

Unraveling the covert, convoluted, centuries-old "cover-up" was the excitement of reading this thriller. On-screen, it all comes too quick and easy - with neither emotional resonance nor intensity. Even the historical flashbacks are discordant. There is no chemistry between two-time Oscar-winner Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou ("Amelie"), perhaps because of a crucial change: Langdon lacks conviction. He's been transformed into a constrained skeptic who doesn't really doubt official Christian doctrine.

On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, "The Da Vinci Code" is a sinister yet only mildly suspenseful 6. This overly cautious "Code" certainly isn't all it's cracked up to be.