The Da Vinci Code: Extended Cut Blu-ray Disc

The Da Vinci Code
 
Over the past ten years, there have been only a few phenomenons in the literary world: Harry Potter, Bridget Jones and The Da Vinci Code. All three have transferred to major movie successes and Dan Brown's book (soon to be followed by Angels and Demons) was destined to become a controversial, but hugely successful film.
 
Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) is a symbologist who is being hunted by Fache (Jean Reno) for the murder of a noted scholar in Paris's The Louvre. Aided by Sophie Neveu (Audrey Tautou), he must discover the clues behind scholar's final message, which leads him to the story of the Holy Grail and a secret group hiding the secret of the bloodline of Jesus Christ. Langdon must uncode all the clues, evade the scary monk assassin Silas (Paul Bettany) and discover a secret that may destroy religious history forever.
 
Now it would be easy to say your faith will depend on how you look at the film. To me, it feels a lot like watching JFK as you watch the clues and conspiracies being explained. If you have read the book, you may feel that they skipped over a lot of story. This is true and it does seem that very little is given to actual characterisation within the film. Characters seem to come in and out of the film as if they are in 'Cameo-mode' and then disappear again. This is most obvious with the portrayal of Teabing by Sir Ian McKellen who is excellent in his portrayal as the scholar explaining the mystery behind the Holy Grail, but then nothing is added to his character and so you feel almost nothing for him. Also Bettany is wonderful as Silas, but there is simply not enough screen time for him to make the kind of impact that I was hoping for.Visually the film is stunning and score by Han Zimmer is as good as anything he has produced. The whole editing and creation of the film is wonderful and I can even look passed Tom Hank's ludicrous hair which became a target for parody after its release.
 
Because of the amount of content a Blu-Ray can hold, when you see two disks you are either in for a treat or you're in for some overkill. This set is a bit of both. With seventeen behind the scenes featurettes I doubt even the biggest fan will sit through them all. Though they cover every aspect of creating this film, from the music to the writer, to the casting, it's simply too much and maybe as a long documentary it would be fine, but as these individual videos it was just too much. However, also included is a commentary by Ron Howard on selected scenes which is a great idea as it meant that rather sitting through the whole film again to hear stories about camera angles and long shooting days, these were all scenes that you felt Howard had something he wanted to talk about or explain. The 'Picture-in-Picture' feature is a great new way to watch the film as it combines the 'find a rabbit' element from the old DVDs with a commentary element as at certain points in the film you are given behind the scenes video, photos, storyboards and audio from those involved. This such an interesting way to go about it and made me want to watch the film again, just to see what goodies will be on offer.
 
The Da Vinci Code is a film about faith, about trying to find meaning where there may not be any. For those who are very religious, you may find the whole thing preposterous or blasphemous. For those who are not, you may find this either a string of plausible ideas or simple string of coincidences (Similar to any conspiracy theory). Ron Howard's creation of the book is not the greatest film ever made, but in terms of an 'adaptation' it isn't so bad and it's not as if it destroys the book altogether. As to whether you want to own it for the 'extended cut' of only an extra nineteen minutes, well that's up to you to decide.