Salutations, traveler of The Internets! Welcome to William's Bloody Hell, so named after our founder, Sir Bloody William.
He is seen in the likeness above in a rare, 19th century woodcut. This
image was rumoured to have been
commissioned after a bout of unpleasantness
in the White Chapel district of London. Do enjoy your stay and peruse our many, varied offerings, much of which cannot be found elsewhere!
:: The DaVinci Code ::
by William the Bloody
Robert Langdon is an expert on symbols, symbology, and their origins so the French police bring him in on their investigation (since he is in France on a book tour) of the death of the Louvre curator because the scene is riddled with odd symbols drawn by victim with his own blood. The body is in the pose of the Vitruvian Man and Langdon is musing over some of the writings on the floor when the police's own cryptologist Sophie Neveu arrives on the scene. She hands Langdon a phone and tells him his embassy has left a very important message and it is urgent. The message was NOT from the embassy, but Sophie herself warning Langdon that the police suspect him for the murder and can hold him indefinitely without cause. Langdon lies and tells the police that the message was to inform him that a dear friend died and to excuse him to the bathroom for a moment. Sophie slips into the men's room and explains that the dead man was her grandfather and it is her belief that he wanted her to contact Langdon, but the police misinterpreted this as the victim fingering his killer. They trick the police into leaving the museum and what started out as Sophie taking a moment to say goodbye to her grandfather, turns into finding a clue, and another, and all signs point to Da Vinci and the ancient, secret order to which he belonged. A hunt for a killer swiftly expands into a hidden world of conspiracies and cover ups, and some people aren't afraid to kill to keep certain secrets from ever coming to light.
The Good: There was some pretty good acting from all parties here. Really, good show. I want to compliment their choice of Audrey Tautou as Sophie, who has been predominantly a French-only actress (you may remember her from the cross-over hit, Amelie). I can't express how happy I was for there to be actual use of foreign languages in an American made movie! It really irks me to no end when we have two French people in France talking to each other in think French accents, when come on, they OUGHT to speaking in French! Well, the finally got it right; the French people speak French, the Americans speak English and the Italians speak Italian (it's about time). This movie is comprised of gorgeous on location filming, and in a movie like this, I wouldn't have it any other way.
The Bad: While I'm one who loves mysteries, puzzles, anagrams and problems to be solved, this movie managed to make them no fun at all. Let's say you have to solve ten puzzles to get to finish. What fun are they when after solving two, you already know what the finish is? That's how this film made me feel. I could see the answers to everything coming from a mile off. I hadn't even read the book, or known too much what the main plot was about and yet it all seemed so obvious. This wouldn't normally be all too bad, but in this case the whole movie was about the puzzles and mysteries, it had nothing else going on, so being bored with those made me bored with the film.
In the end it was meh. I saw just about every "twist" coming and when a movie is based solely on twists, this is very, very bad. The acting is good, and the direction isn't bad either, but it didn't really offer me too much else. Didn't exactly suck, I've seen worse.
C+
