The Da Vinci Treasure

This is a terrible rip off of The Davinci Code. The packaging is intended to trick you into thinking you're picking up the original. Then you get home and find that you've been had.

The scene cuts are so terribly distracting that you feel like a couple of 12 year kids edited this movie in their basement. I could only stand to watch about 10 minutes of it before I felt my self respect draining away.

Don't waste 10 seconds of you time on this movie.

It should be illegal to produce movies that are rip offs of (semi)good movies and then package them in deceptive cases. I've told my local movie rental to pull it from their shelves or face lots of dissatisfied customers.

It is impossible to overstate just how bad this film is. Bad acting, scripting, location sets, horribly transparent cost-cutting (the Ford Econoline van with obviously U.S. plates in "Italy" was about the last straw, made worse by the pedestrian attempt to electronically blot out the plate after the van comes to a stop). The casting was equally poor, with the "Italian " leading lady who spoke Italian poorly and English with a British accent, along with her "Italian" Cardinal uncle who spoke near perfect American English). I don't want to rant here, but just about everything in the film was bad. The story line was vague inasmuch as the "clues" were never satisfactorily linked (this may be partly the fault of the poor sound quality, which made softly spoken dialogue difficult to understand). I feel more stupid for having watched this movie.

This takes cheek to a new level . From the outset characters mention " The Da Vinci Codex " which leads to the conclusion that THE DA VINCI CODEX was going to be the original title of the movie but Asylum got cold feet at the last minute , especially when it became clear Dan Brown was no stranger to plagiarism court cases even if he was the defendant . Titles of films aren't copyrighted but this film does sail close to the wind . Unfortunately as the film continues you realise the title is the least of the problems

From the outset it's clear there is zero reality involved . The producers could claim it's escapist fantasy not a documentary but even so there still has to be credibility for a film to work . For example the opening sequence takes place at a mansion in London where a couple of bodyguards patrol the gardens armed with AK47s . The gun laws are very strict in Britain with possession of an assault rifle enough to get you a life sentence , it's not something you can posses even if you have a firearms license . Sure enough many shots are fired in the opening sequence but for some strange reason the police never arrive

The film is full of these gaps in credibility. There's a car chase involving hero and heroine Michael Archer and Gulia Pedina where they're pursued by the villains who continually fire shots at the duo . The bad guys eventually catch up with the goodies in a culdesac and politely ask for the Turin Shroud in Michael's possession then drive off . Let's see they were trying to kill Michael and Gulia seconds earlier and when they catch up with them they suddenly decide not to kill them ? Can anyone spot an inconsistency here ? The scene also sees Michael refers to the villains killing Gulia's relative who is a cardinal .Unless I missed something there's no way Michael would know this since he and Gulia were in a different location when it happened . I suppose theaudience aren't supposed to think about these plot holes instead they're attention is concentrated on Gulia's cleavage ? I'm sorry but no woman has a good enough cleavage to hide such clumsy and careless scripting

If the screenplay by Paul Bales and Carlos De Los Rios is bad then the directing is worse . Much worse . Director Peter Mervis is also the editor on the film and the editing is possibly the most noticeable thing about THE DA VINCI TREASURE and that's not a compliment . Remember in these old classic Hollywood movies a newspaper man takes a photo with a big camera with a light bulb ? There's a flash of light and a whooshing sound . We see something similar continually happen throughout the film but there's absolutely no consistency to it . It happens during action scenes then it doesn't happen . It happens when characters are introduced then doesn't happen when other characters aren't introduced . We have no idea why the director does it and it's literally painful to watch

Don't be fooled by the presence of Lance Henriksen either because despite being the main villain he's only in the film for a total of three scenes . Most of the screen time is composed of C Thomas Howell and Nicole Sherwin trying to convince us they're a couple of academic anthropologists and failing . Howell looks exactly like he did in WAR OF THE WORLDS 2 THE NEXT WAVE where he lived in a shanty town after surving an alien invasion that has destroyed civilization . Honestly he looks like some homeless heroin addict than an intellectual . As I said earlier Ms Sherwin has an impressive cleavage but if cleavage is the best thing about a movie then it's just got to be a very poor movie

I have three words for you C. Thomas Howell. Made for TV? Straight to DVD? both are too good for this film. I knew when I picked up this DVD at my local Blockbuster I was in for a treat.....I hadn't seen a good comedy in a while, so I rented it and took it home. Bottom Line I want to meet the pitch person that sold this to the studio!! This person has to be the best pitch person in all of Hollywood!!! #1 Who would even attempt to make a movie even loosely based on this story #2 Why? This movie lacks everything. Acting 0 Action 0 Story Line 0. Hey studio what's with all of the distracting "Freeze Frames" and ridiculous cartoon like sound effects? Oh thats right compensating for a very poorly made movie. You would have been better off donating the studios money to a local charity! I have seen Youtube Videos that blow this away!! Here is my advice, if you get a kick and a comedic rush from really really stupid movies, rent it!! If you take your movie indulgences more seriously wait for the Davinci Code to come out on DVD.

Unlike a few, but like many others, we were tricked by the misleading DVD-cover. After more than 15 minutes of not seeing Tom Hanks I realized this was NOT The Da Vinci Code.

These are my other impressions divided into positive (+), neutral (±) and negative (-) remarks:

(+) I'm glad that bad movies like these exists so that you can refer to them. It's fun to talk about. ^^

(+) The movie had a few decent moments. Still not enough to compensate the negatives though.

(±) Sometimes I couldn't follow the plot. Their way of reasoning was far beyond me because they connected dots I didn't even know about. But I don't dare to say whether that's the writer's fault or my own.

(-) Annoying, distracting "freeze frames" at the beginning of the movie that didn't mean anything.

(-) Bad acting.

(-) Bad plot.

(-) Bad special effects, especially at the end of the movie.

(-) Lack of suspense.

(-) ... should I go on?

Believe me, even though these are all opinions, I think the low ratings for this movie are justified.