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Sophie gets the lowdown on the code from Teabing (Ian McKellen)

What's more, Langdon and Teabing now play a sort of good-cop-bad-cop routine. The book flat-out states that "five million" (emphasis in the original) women were killed by the Catholic church over 300 years, and it states this in a passage that seems to be reflecting Langdon's own thoughts as he thinks back on the history of the church. But in the film, Langdon says the number was 50,000, and then Teabing interjects that some would say the victims actually numbered in the "millions." Also, when Teabing says that the emperor Constantine had to intervene in religious matters in the early 4th century because Christians were rioting against pagans in the streets (a claim that is brought to visual life in a brief, violent flashback), Langdon interjects and says that the pagans might have started the atrocities first—a claim that is never backed up by anything on the screen. And the film's version of Langdon explicitly says that Constantine did not invent the divinity of Jesus—which is almost the exact opposite of what the book's version of Langdon says.

The changes the film makes to Langdon have a subtle, even sinister, effect. The book tends to emphasize his superior knowledge, which could have the effect of distancing him from the average moviegoer. But the film casts Everyman actor Tom Hanks in the role, and then makes Langdon a moderate Everyman who initially finds Teabing's claims too crazy. The thing is, as far as this story is concerned, Langdon comes to discover that Teabing, for all his anti-ecclesiastical kookiness, is actually right. In short, the film is the story of how Langdon comes to believe in Teabing's theories; and because Langdon has been made more accessible, he takes the audience along with him on his journey to this new belief. And while all this is going on, the film's explicitly Christian characters—Silas, Fache, and the manipulative Bishop Aringarosa (Alfred Molina), who takes his own cues from a mysterious unseen "Teacher"—are all portrayed as pathetic dupes, let down by their own beliefs.

In one of the final scenes, Langdon tries to spell out the film's main theme. Referring to the nature of Jesus, Langdon asks, "Why does it have to be human or divine?" At this point, I half-expected Tom Hanks to go into Forrest Gump mode and say, "Maybe it's both"—which would, of course, be the orthodox position (even if we might quibble with what the film says about the way Jesus expressed his humanity during his earthly ministry). But no, instead, Langdon's next words are, "Maybe human is divine." Which may be very soothing to the post-modern ear, but it just begs the questions: What is divinity? What is humanity?

Alfred Molina as Bishop Aringarosa

Given this kind of dialogue, it's impossible to take the filmmakers seriously when they say that their movie makes no historical or theological claims. Why did they feel the need to add details missing from Brown's book, or to correct some of its errors, if the historical claims didn't really matter? And would they have been just as pleased with a closing scene in which Langdon said Jesus is the divine Son of God who became man to show us how to become the fully human beings we were originally meant to be? Somehow, I doubt it.

And what of the entertainment, the rollicking good thrill ride that the filmmakers say they are trying to give us? Truth be told, whether it's Silas popping out of nowhere with a weapon in his hand, or Langdon accidentally disarming an ally who turns out to be a gun-packing enemy, or Sophie driving a car backwards through busy traffic, these are among the movie's weakest and most generic elements. The performances are all pretty grim, too; only McKellen, as Teabing, seems to be having any fun. And Howard's direction emphasizes all the wrong things; the quasi-academic exposition, which is what has intrigued most fans of the book, is tossed off so rapidly in places that you almost miss it, whereas the camera dwells at some length on scenes of the albino monk's self-flagellation, among other things. Hans Zimmer's musical score is effective in places, at least, but it would have been even better if it didn't sound like a carbon copy of the themes he wrote for Batman Begins.

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