Jason Van Dyke, Scottish Rite Intern

Not bad. That’s all I could think as I exited The Da Vinci Code. Not bad.

Unless you have been living under a rock somewhere , you have heard the hype and the protests swirling around The Da Vinci Code, the movie directed by Ron Howard and adapted from the wildly popular book by Dan Brown.

For those expecting a Mason-bashing, like the Morgan Affair, or even a movie with Masons as a central character, like National Treasure, you will be disappointed, as neither is the case. What The Da Vinci Code does offer, however, is mild action mixed with historical references and top Hollywood stars, and it does these things quite well.

When the movie was announced, Masons could not help but take a deep breath and think, “Léo Taxil,” or that maybe Masonry would play a central role to the plot, but for the uninitiated eye, there is only one direct reference—the word Masonic is used to describe some of the symbolism in Rosslyn Chapel—in the whole 2 hours and 29 minutes of the film. For members of the Craft, however, some of the history, characters, and symbols of the movie, like Jacques DeMolay and the Templars do hit close to home.

The plot of the movie follows almost slavishly close to the book, leaving the surprises for the few people left on planet Earth that have not read it. However, for those couple of you: a quick synopsis.

Tom Hanks plays Robert Langdon, a Harvard symbologist who is called in by the French Police in Paris to help solve the grisly murder of the Louvre’s curator. Through cryptic symbols and the political intrigue of medieval Europe, Langdon, with the help of his smart and sexy companion Sophie Neveu (played by smart and sexy French actress Audrey Tautou) find that the curator was the Grand Master of a super-secret society called the Priory of Sion which had been protecting—the secret of the Holy Grail.

In fact, the plot is very similar to the premise of the book Holy Blood, Holy Grail, by Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, and Henry Lincoln, which posits that Jesus was married to Mary Magdalene who fled to France with their child soon after the crucifixion, and that this fact was covered up by the church for centuries in order to establish Jesus’ divinity. And while there is more to the plot than this, I won’t spoil it for those of you planning to see the movie or read the book yourselves (both of which I recommend).

I have to confess, though, that I had very low expectations for the film. In fact, it seemingly had “flop” written all over it. Coming on the heels of an ultra-successful book, having a huge budget, and staring some of the biggest names in Hollywood, one can’t help visualize the mighty falling. But that simply wasn’t the case.

While it wasn’t a rollicking adventure of the sort Indiana Jones enjoys, it did do a good job of spanning the ages to tell a relatively complex story, all while infusing a sliver of action into the mix.

So, as I said before, not bad, and it’s easy to recommend you go and see it, and then you can make up your own mind as to what all the controversy is about.

Jason Van Dyke is an intern at the House of the Temple in Washington, D.C. He is a senior at The George Washington University majoring in Political Communications and Advertising. He is completing his petition for Benjamin B. French Lodge No. 15 in Georgetown. In his free time he enjoys modern art and architecture, reading, and frequent trips to the many free museums in the Washington area with his wife, a public school teacher.