This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

The story-telling is good with flashbacks.The film is both funny and heartbreaking. You smile in a scene and get a soulcrushing revelation in the next.

I think this is a new genre that they're all sort of working their way through it and haven't got all the kinks worked out yet but it's a genre that works for me.

All of these films share one commonality, that being a kind of emotional center that humanizes a cast of monsters.

My wife and I both read the book recently, and were quite intrigued by the topics presented in it. We were quite happy to obtain some visual information about it, so clearly, a documentary should have been a great mechanism for that. And one titled "Cracking(!) the code", at that (good title, although the book does a good job at cracking that code, anyhow.) Too bad we hadn't read the comments on this site, but at least we only wasted $5 on this movie on Pay-Per-View, not $30 on the DVD as the previous commentator. Pretty soon we were scratching our heads in frustration at this amateur, annoying time-waster. This movie was so bad it wasn't even funny.It's not just that most of the movie shows sitting, blabbing experts, they are rather incomprehensible at that. The "um, ah, ahem"-peppered speech will do that, but the background music, louder than the voices, doesn't help. Most of them repeated themselves or the others. Each of the two experts interviewed together actually seemed bored, if not tranquillized, when the other spoke. One expert must have been recorded using a camcorder, which was occasionally trained up close and personal on his rings or his legs. And the worst thing: They barely said anything we hadn't read in the book. The only useful bits were the indications of which 'facts' in Brown's book were actually fiction.The movie also included footage of several places mentioned in the book, as well as some of the classical masterpieces. That was interesting, but quite marred by the post-production transition effects: pictures were "moved out", the screen flickered black, then new pictures moved in, as if in an old-style slideshow. The net effect was nothing short of annoying.We don't know who Simon Cox is but we got to see him in the movie. For a long time. We didn't quite care to see him declaim to the camera for minutes on end. And there was also a narrator! Bottom line: If you haven't read the book, this movie wouldn't advance your knowledge, and is a rather expensive and confusing sleeping pill. If you have read it, enjoy the fiction and save your time for more enjoyable pursuits than watching this.

If you're not one of the 450 trillion* people who have read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code, for the purposes of this review you should know that it is an adventure/thriller in the tradition of The Celestine Prophecy that unearths a conspiracy theory surrounding the church and the falsification of history, specifically Jesus Christ's mantle as the only son of God. Some of Brown's book is based in fact, and it's this which documentary Cracking the Da Vinci Code sets out to explore.An interesting premise soon turns to farce as a bunch of unwashed intellectuals make fanciful interpretations of Leonardo Da Vinci's artworks, then move beyond the borders of common sense by claiming the carved cubes in a Scottish church might actually be a code that unlocks the truth about the Christian religion. It's so wacky, you almost expect them to burst out laughing – but nope, they're deadly serious. Adding insult to idiocy, the Yank narrator mispronounces "Thames" and "Edinburgh". It's entirely possible that Christianity was adulterated somewhere along the line for nefarious purposes, but this undergraduate fairy story takes us no closer to discovering the truth – or anything else.*This may not be the exact number, but it's probably pretty close.

Everyone loves a mystery right? Well that I guess was my excuse for watching this, but within about fifteen minutes I had come to realize my decision was misguided.For a start the production values are shoddy - crappy electronic music that is supposed to set a sinister mood but only succeeds in annoying and budget cinematography.But these problems could have been overcome if the documentary (I hesitate to call it that, its really like a piece of fan worship for a mediocre novel, much like an amateur fan website) if it had any credible evidence or a coherent narrative.The "experts" interviewed were very scant and seemed to lack any academic credentials. Often they would say things like "this could mean that" or "this must mean this" when what they really had was a lack of anything remotely approaching evidence.This is a documentary for the type of people who are convinced there is scientific basis for astrology. It could have been a lot better if it had been an analysis of the legends of the knights templar and the priory of sion.

I have just seen this, and I can say I know more than I did before watching it. I was curious as to what this Da Vinci code was, and I hadn't read the book/s on the subject, so I thought this would be a good way of finding out. The documentary satisfies this to some degree, but it also falls down in a number of areas.First, the narration: The narrator was very hard to follow, as he often seemed to rush words and paragraphs together, and his pronunciation of place names was incorrect in some places at least. The information conveyed in the narration was not necessarily that helpful or illuminating.Also, the promised contents stated on the blurb of the DVD were somewhat misleading. The Dan Brown "interview" was merely an audio clip of him speaking about his book/the issues - nothing like a face-to-face interview, where the viewer can see the speaker and make some sense of who the person is, and their body language. That said, it was good to hear from the author himself and not merely have him talked about.The documentary speaks to four experts on the subject of Da Vinci and the gnostic connections of the European hidden orders, such as the Knights Templar. There was a subtext here which seemed to imply that those interested in this subject are or should be rebellious or "alternative". Maybe that is a minor point. Again, I have to qualify this and say I was impressed with the seriousness and clarity of points made as the documentary progressed. I was particularly impressed with Dr Hoeller's impressions on the subject.Visually, this program was beautifully done. The locale shots and some of the camera angles/editing seemed to make the work buoyant. The background music was dramatic, perhaps a little too overpowering - moments of silence I think are as valuable to drama and contemplation as a musical presence.Lastly, I think you will get something out of this, but I also recommend doing your own background reading.