Midweek Mention... The Da Vinci Code

The Da Vinci Code

Sidey: This midweek mentioned, I've seen many, many times was this, your first covenant? And it's the DaVinci code.

Reegs: So 18 years after Dan Browns, 2003 Burke took airports by storm. Uh

Ready Yeah. I finally decided to board this train and see Ron Howard's movie that was made just three years later.

This was a massive thing. The book wasn't it. It was everybody. Did you read it? No. Did you read it?

Dan: I read it. Yeah. Yeah. However, I read the other ones as well, actually, but this was the better one. I've I've helped by him.

Yeah. Do we even need to say the story? I mean, the DaVinci code, everybody kind of knows it now. Cause I think everybody read the book at some point. Did you,

Reegs: No, no, no, no, no. This

Dan: start as well.

Yeah,

Reegs: the first time I've dipped my toe. It never interested me, particularly the book. And then when something becomes really popular like that, I become really like contrarion basically. And I'm like, I just went and read that. Let's go for it. Let's see what we thought.

Dan: Okay. So this has got Tom Wang sin, isn't it? And

Sidey: well, this is huge because

it's yeah, it's L Ron Hubbard directed it.

It's Tom Hanks, obviously massive star. What's his face? Gandalf huge at the time done, Magneto X-Men staff done. Lord of the rings and stuff. So massive star and it was a super super famous book.

So this was a huge huge,

yeah Yeah. He was coming, coming through.

Reegs: He's one of the first characters that we see almost.

Well, we, we see Jack Sonia and he's being pursued through the lube in Paris. Isn't he? And he's demanding silent. As we, we later find out his name, Paul Bettany his character who we've only seen in flashes. But he's demanding the location of something called the Keystone which Sonya protagonist reveals is kept beneath the rose.

And then Silas thanks. Thanks him. And shoots him.

Dan: Yeah. I mean, and for anybody who has never heard of this and doesn't know what the fuck we're talking about. This was a huge book Dan brown and it was kind of like an intellectual Indiana Jones character that he, he built to find the holy grail of, of some thought really.

And, and he used cleverly.

Facts to, to, to mirror in and, and to kind of intertwined

Reegs: say facts and cleverly.

Dan: Well, I mean, the fact that the buildings are real where, and, and there's a big chore actually. I mean, off the strength of the book, people went to visit a lot of the, the churches and the places that mentioned in the book to, to go and find some kind of conspiracy within the book itself as well.

Sidey: Indiana Jones had already found it.

Dan: but

Reegs: Yes. That's true.

It's not Indiana Jones. So it's, it's Tom Hanks and he's in town giving a presentation.

That he's a renowned religious symbologist because it says it in fucking massive letters on a PowerPoint presentation that he's giving the first of many PowerPoint presentations that the movie decides to do.

And in case you're too stupid to realize what he's talking about, which is religious symbol. So you could have probably deduced it from that. But anyway, he wears all black, black suit black shirt. He looks like a douche. Really. Let's be honest. You know, when you turn that kid, he turns up into the office and he's got like a

Sidey: book

Reegs: shirt on and it may be a white tie.

But it is handy if you ever need to escape through a bunch of nuns, like he does later. And he's got a mullet.

Dan: a little, one

Sidey: Robert Robert Langdon.

Yeah.

Dan: yeah. That's that's Tom Hanks, his character and he's, as you said, he's. Decipher symbols from the past. And

Sidey: but from the ones that he can't

Dan: apart from those, yeah.

Reegs: those ones.

But he's contacted by the police. Isn't he at the, but they've got a sense of drama as well. Cause they queue up in his book signing, to say, to say that there was a murder at the loop and I've just like already.

Dan: with me

Reegs: Yeah. But they cued up first a man, he goes to the crime scene, which is a pretty grizzly affair.

Sidey: It's like, I didn't, I didn't rewatch it for this, but I have seen it a lot. It's sort of like,

a Drawing around him

Reegs: And he's painted a, so he's created a puzzle with his last dying breath, or let's be fair. His last few dying breasts, because he does hide a key in the museum.

Strips himself covers his body in symbols in his own blood then writes a three or four line cryptic message in his own blood blood starting with the Fibonacci sequence out of order before posing his body in a manner identical to DaVinci's Vitruvian, man, and then dying.

Sidey: Think that's necessarily possible.

Reegs: Well that I am literally explaining what that is.

Literally what happens. I mean,

Dan: quite a common cause of death, actually. You'd be surprised that kind of

Sidey: He never danced again, but they are being pursued by a loan sort of security guard Aren't they?

Reegs: Is he a security

Sidey: is there a police officer in any case, there's sort of one person tracking them and they have to sort of solve. Cryptic puzzle

Reegs: of which there are a few

Sidey: to get.

And then he's like, oh, oh, the Mona Lisa, you know, and they run to the next one. And eventually

Reegs: it's the Madonna on the rocks, I think is the one, but it's, so we didn't say that Sophie never is Audrey tattoo.

Sidey: She is a.

fucking mega babe in there. That's why I keep watching

Reegs: She's a police police cryptographer. Yeah. And she, she tells Robert that the, the authorities suspect him of the crime.

Sidey: Well, it's because they're French And they're lazy. So they would just pin it on the first guy They see,

Dan: I wonder if many forces have their own kind of cryptologists symbolic guest.

Reegs: yes, I think so. Every force, yeah, that everyone's got a

Sidey: It's who you turn to first in a, in a major crime. And so that's where your first port of call.

Reegs: Somebody put a GPS tracker in Langdon's pocket. So they, he throws it out the windows and actually there are no windows on that side. I didn't move to where

Dan: I wonder if they had mobile phones, 2003. that far back?

Reegs: Yeah, I think, I think they do feature in it. There is a, there is a bunch of shit with like anagrams.

Did and it sort of floats around his head sort of like a ghostly Sudoku.

Sidey: Yeah.

Reegs: And he can rearrange it. It's a sort of attempt to inject a little bit of visual pinash into something that's quite gloomy visually. Anyway, they end up at a Swiss depository. Don't know where they find a

box.

Sidey: That's what they find.

is they're flooded. So yeah, they do. They, he throws this GPS he attached it to a bar of soap flows out of the window. That's how he escaped the gendarmerie And yeah, you're right. Then they go off to this sort of slightly sinister Swiss bank account thing.

Where

Reegs: There's a scene, I think, where she reverses really fast away from them. And it's strongly implied is it is three or four times throughout this film that God himself directly intervenes in the plot to, to save them like through some sort of like miraculous occurrence or, oh my God, no, the worst, the worst.

Well, we get into the worst because

Yeah, ah, fucking L is a bunch of shit about at the depository box where they use the Fibonacci sequence. I've got to you. Can't see, because it's too cold in here, but I've actually got a t-shirt that says

Dan: tattoo then,

Reegs: It's got the Fibonacci sequence on it. So that's

Dan: As easy as what'd he say?

Reegs: as easy as 1, 1, 2. Yeah.

Sidey: you know,

Reegs: They've got this, they've got a fineness.

They find this Crip techs in the security deposit box, which is a thing that it's a Neola neology is a new word. Dan brown made it up for this. It's like a five word coded.

Primitive self-destructing box thing. That's got a map or something in it.

Sidey: Yeah. Yeah. It's got a parchment with some, was it vinegar?

or has some sort of acid on it?

Destroys the text if you don't get. the code. Right.

Reegs: And they're on the run from the authorities and the bank calls some people, but then they've got a safe, passionate passage, close to the guy, sort of smuggled them out there or not. Then he, the guy who smuggled them out of there then becomes a turncoat and then manages to knock himself unconscious shutting a door which is the second time on a bullet that fell out of a thing and rolled into a

Dan: Yeah. I mean, it's it, it jumps, isn't it from kind of location to location, startling revelation to desperate chase scene repeat is needed. And it kind of knits

Sidey: well, he, yeah. thanks. starts to sort of get some information from Audrey tattoos. says, did How well did you know your uncle is her uncle? Isn't it, Jackson? Yeah,

Reegs: know, grandfather,

Sidey: grandpa, Yeah, well, he used to like train me and all these puzzles and do all this that and the other, and then you get some sort of flashbacks and he was part of this the secret society

Dan: the template,

Sidey: the nights of the

Reegs: Well, he was the Knights of the Templar or this sort of military wing of the prion of siree. I think

Sidey: it's called.

Reegs: And they're the more sort of

Dan: you got to be careful talking about this stuff. You never know who might just come knocking on the door. You know, this is all heavy conspiracy stuff, isn't it.

Reegs: They get to Versailles where.

So Lee T being Liv's ear McKellen, it's quite a funny introduction.

But it's only just so he can take us to his study where he's got a fucking presentation ready to tell us more exposition is if we hadn't had enough. And he tells us some stuff about the priory of siren and all that shit. And then suddenly Silas appears kind of out of nowhere.

Sidey: Bettany yeah, He likes to flagellate himself.

Reegs: He does. Don't we all, if you could, you would. Yeah. And he wears a thing. I didn't catch the name of it, but it's like a garter, but it hurts you.

Dan: all garters do anyway, don't they? But this

Sidey: this is like

a thorn thorny thing, too. You know, he's got to pay for his sins for banks to go and murdering people.

left right.

And center

Reegs: We see his backstory in a, in a flashback. You get seven. They have these sort of monochrome color, saturated flashbacks to the past, but it's fucking hilarious because they use it for showing when things happen 2000 years ago. And when things happen seconds before in the plot, so it, yeah, as they do later, when they escape from the plane

Dan: Yeah.

Reegs: oh, this movie is fucking stupid, really stupid.

Dan: It follows the book closely. I th I think that's what his his target was and they went to make two sequels after this

Sidey: yeah, yeah. This is the best one of them. or Ian McKellan has this theory in it. that This is basically about vagina. He points to the last supper picture and he's like, is that Langdon? the fucking, you know, the expert on this field couldn't recognize this symbol and it's like a V you know, someone's missing It's Christ power.

on earth is a woman, blah, blah, blah. So you started to put the pieces together, you know what you should be,

Reegs: you should be.

Sidey: It turns out that here McKellen is also going to be a turncoat because he wants to ground like any grail, enthusiastic. He has to get his,

hands on it.

Dan: Yeah. Even this guy who's been pure of heart. Otherwise he's been turned by the gray or it's only out here where really that has any men rules about him.

Sidey: Well, who knows if he's got his hands on it? I

mean, absolute power corrupts. Absolutely.

Reegs: Eight, this God, where are we now? skipped the airplane, which I really wanted to tear into because it's so fucking stupid when they D the, the plane lands and they don't check the only car that leaves and they're just on the floor and they show you in flashback that they ran out of another door.

As the plane was doing a handbrake turn

Sidey: Yeah. They they, they have some clues and they're effectively.

on the run constantly And this movie.

Which, culminates in one

Reegs: how long has this been going? Cause they haven't slept or eaten

Sidey: I think it, was 24 hours. Isn't it, is, it

Reegs: seems about a week considering they've been in France and England, and now they, then they fuck off to Scotland. Is that

Sidey: a lot of their mouse. But they, my favorite scene? When you're talking about stupidity, Venus is when the McKellen does eventually corner them in a building.

And he has them at gunpoint. and He's going to kill him and a pigeon moves.

Reegs: It's amazing. It's

Sidey: and they run away again.

Reegs: Yeah. Then that is when Hank shouts, I have to get to a library fast, which is really good. And they do get to a library pretty quick. And then they're in Scotland and their Sophie is reunited with her grandmother and brother.

And she spent most of her life thinking they were never dead. And of course is, is pretty pleased that the.

Sidey: There is the same way you see her in the back of the car which crushes and NYS pretty fucking crib. Yeah. that was cool. Yeah.

Reegs: But then it's revealed that that Sophie is actually Mary's descendant.

Sidey: she is the holy grail.

Reegs: So in other words, a 2000 year old bloodline descended from a couple who definitely had multiple children, had exactly one living direct

Sidey: descendant.

Dan: that we know of.

Sidey: well I suppose the primary or the the Knights Templar would have killed all the rest of them off. Is that what we were led to believe?

Dan: I guess so. Yeah. I think that's the

Sidey: I don't know.

Reegs: we haven't even mentioned Alfred Molina's in

Sidey: this

Reegs: a bit, sometimes looking like he's a bad guy, but his name is literally red herring in Italian, a ringer also. Yeah.

Dan: Yeah. It's

Reegs: Then there's a thing at the end where he cuts himself shaving and the blood goes into a flirt and li and then that means that he has to go to Paris and realize that the loop all along was the giant vagina pointing to where, and then he nails because God.

Sidey: I'm guessing that you weren't a huge fan of this, or did you enjoy the stupidity? this

Reegs: I have really enjoyed slating it because it's fucking stupid. Utterly, utterly stupid. I'm sure the book was a lot better because I know a lot of people have read it and people whose opinions that I care about say it's good, but it's just stupid as a film. And it's like endless exposition after exposition and

Scooby doo for conspiracy nut jobs.

Sidey: I've seen it about 10 times I really Like,

mostly CRA

Dan: I've, I've, I've seen this twice. This has been the second time after promising. I would never watch that again. I watched it again.

Sidey: Have you seen like

Dan: book, I enjoyed it. And it had a real pace about it and it had the tension and things that I didn't feel in this story.

I mean, you had one Howard, you had Tom Hanks, he's a winning combo. You had a hit book. It just didn't.

Sidey: but this is, say, this is what I would say about Tom Hanks. this is largely the kind of middle of the road easy nonsense. that he turns out.

Yeah

Reegs: no Grimm for character in his whole character is, was scared once as a child in a.

That's his character. Yeah. Claustrophobic. There's no room for any character, cause it's 140 minutes of just plot after plot after plot. And if you don't, I, if I can imagine it being a page Turner, but on the screen, it's I think Ron Howard probably has sucked all the life out of it

Sidey: because it doesn't have to. Now it is the classic role.

Yeah.

Reegs: And then the, the saved by God's stuff was just so, so like it made me create.

Dan: yeah. I mean, I, I don't know how this dead overall I imagined just because of the weight of the director and the actor that it made money or at least money back, but,

Sidey: a lot of fanfare got into it because

of this assessing the perks of the budget for it was 125 mil,

Dan: which seems overly expensive for this.

Sidey: Well, they made a hundred, 760.

Yeah. So decent

work cash

Dan: w what's the write ins on this? Cause I can't imagine it scored very highly over, over this period of time. Now

Sidey: metric 6.6 and I am DB

26% on

rotten tomatoes. not well-liked 46, 10 on metal cricket. 80% a 7% on Google because Google,

but

you did make a lot of money.

They kept it deliberately. It doesn't refer to any of his previous adventures because they're all predate. DaVinci code. You really enjoy the other films. If you didn't like this one, because there were a lot worse.

Reegs: One with you and McGregor is a bit better, which

Sidey: angels and demons is that one. Not great.

And there's another

Reegs: it will take us there

Sidey: disco, Inferno or something.

Dan: they, they, they don't seem to translate very well into, into films. His books look unlike John Grisham, for example, who's done you know, the Pelican brief and the firm, and a few others that have translated reasonably well into a time to kill was another one with Matthew McConaughey, who

but

I don't know.

I mean, this guy, Dan brown, he's obviously got the Th the, the pen in his hand, he's, he's a gifted writer and he's popular and everything, but it didn't translate in the film for me, just didn't work. I mean, maybe it was because of the hype of the book and everything that was so well loved. You expected more from, from this.

Reegs: I think maybe, I dunno, it seemed to me there was so much plot that it could only work as like mini series or something because

Dan: Maybe it needed to be in two parts. And as you say a little more about the character and to try to care about me a little bit more, but,

Sidey: I mean, the lead being, you know,

Dan: it's not

Sidey: huge into like symbology.

is, It's not a great, lead character, you know for a film it's fairly mundane

Reegs: the idea though, I like, no, I like

Dan: me as well.

Then the conspiracy, I think the

Reegs: well but the idea of Indiana Jones without the whip

cracking, there's

definitely something there. But yeah, I don't, I th and the whole bloodline of Jesus thing that is a strong hook for something, it was just all a bit pretty

Sidey: that There's a scene where they're near the us embassy. And there's a quick shot on the wall a poster of Les Miserables. blur. According to documents it's author Victor Hugo was the 24th Grandmaster of the priory of Saigon. So.

Dan: Cause and some somebody stuff's really interesting. You say like the Vinci, of course he was part of this this group of people as well, who were charged with looking after or knowing secrets and secret societies and things.

And there is something that's interesting about all that. Interesting. Come out in this film for

Reegs: I said something nasty a week or so ago. I think about Catholicism, maybe about the weirder aspects of it, but it did great with me a little bit in this, how they were just like all the bad guys and shadowy and all the stuff that's, you know, I don't know.

Is it racist? I dunno,

Dan: maybe sexist?

Who knows? Probably, probably is. But this film was kind of offensive to me because it didn't really spend my time well on this, you know,

Reegs: glad I watched it though, because

Sidey: you don't, you can, you can attack it with, you know, a fair. You can have a fair fight because you've seen it.

Reegs: Yeah, exactly.

I hit it head on.

Dan: Would you, would you watch it again

Sidey: Another Nine times Let me

Dan: now? I don't. I think this will be the second and

Sidey: time again.

Dan: What, what is it that grabs you about it?

Okay.