by Subhash K Jha

Starring Tom Hanks, Audrey Tautou, Jean Reno, Ian McKellan
Directed by Ron Howard
Rating: **

Kab Clue ...Aur Kahan? If you've read the book you're still in trouble. But if you haven't read the book, then brother...you're in double trouble.

The evangelical subversions of The Da Vinci Code leave you gasping for breath. From its intriguing opening to its cryptic closing, the film leaves audiences largely out of its range of frisson.

While you watch you're no doubt riveted by the counter-biblical theories propounded which are at best amusing, and at their worst they are outrageous.

The question is, how seriously must we take this cinematic version of Dan Brown's rabble- rousing novel? Seen purely as a fictional piece of invention, Da Vinci brings a Mona Lisa smile to your face. You aren't quite sure whether your senses are being sucked into the suspense or simply being teased into submission.

Enigma is endorsed by the plot. No matter how you look at it Da Vinci is stylish cinema done up in colours that vary from the vibrant to the sepia.

Horrific vignettes from the past recreating a historic perspective to the biblical mythology intersperse the present-day investigations of symbologist Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) as he teams up with a rather frigid-looking cryptologist Sophie (French actress Audrey Tautou, doing a rather capable impersonation of an Egyptian Mummy left out in the sun).

Don't look for any crackling chemistry Hanks and his French co-star. They are meant to be partners in a mission that boggles the mind. Director Ron Howard saturates our senses in the most primeval colours of life, giving to the product a hue of hefty flamboyance.

Not every code and symbol in the long but brisk fable makes sense. But life and art, as much as religion and spiritualism are bereft of rationale. You either accept blindly or start applying workaday logistics and find the work lacking in coherence.

Ron Howard's narrative never strays from the enigmatic path. It keeps the audience as much out of the center of the mysterious plot as the protagonists who wear bewilderment like a a second skin.

Director Ron Howard has teamed up earlier with the versatile Tom Hanks in one the actor's earlier films Splash and more recently in Apollo 13. This time the two work in a space that has never been occupied by any film before. They have certainly created a work that works beyond the given parameters of cinematic entertainment.

Watch out for the versatile and watchable French actor Jean Reno as an investigative officer. He's the only actor who dares to question the plot through his performance.