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My rating of The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown: 5.5 / 10
Publisher: Transworld (India / UK), Doubleday (US)
Price: Rs 699

Love him, hate him, you just can’t ignore him. Dan Brown is back…with his new novel The Lost Symbol. Initially titled The Solomon Key, the book was finally released on 15th September 2009. You intuitively know this book was going to smash a few records when you find a PDF ebook torrent of the book within hours of release (probably made easier by the fact that is was released as an ebook for the Amazon Kindle). The first few comments on such highly anticipated book releases are always from retards who shout “Fake!” without even bothering to check. I prowled around torrent sites for “You are a retard, <username of first commenter>” comments to pour in, and then got on to downloading the book once the I knew for sure this was the real thing. The hysteria has already started – The Lost Symbol has already broken the one-day adult fiction sales record and Washington tourism board has launched a special microsite dedicated to the novel. Heavens have mercy on us all.

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Watch a news report about the launch of Dan Brown’s The Lost Symbol

In a way, Dan Brown is like the George Lucas of the publishing industry – he can make mega-hit books by the minute, but years down the line everyone will acknowledge his works as a piece of shit. Just like dear ol’ Chetan Bhagat. Here’s the ‘official’ description for The Lost Symbol:

As the story opens, Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned unexpectedly to deliver an evening lecture in the U.S. Capitol Building. Within minutes of his arrival, however, the night takes a bizarre turn. A disturbing object–artfully encoded with five symbols–is discovered in the Capitol Building. Langdon recognizes the object as an ancient invitation . . . one meant to usher its recipient into a long-lost world of esoteric wisdom.

When Langdon’s beloved mentor, Peter Solomon–a prominent Mason and philanthropist–is brutally kidnapped, Langdon realizes his only hope of saving Peter is to accept this mystical invitation and follow wherever it leads him. Langdon is instantly plunged into a clandestine world of Masonic secrets, hidden history, and never-before-seen locations–all of which seem to be dragging him toward a single, inconceivable truth.

You know what this reminded me of? The interactive Dan Brown plot generator. I’m not kidding. While I was reading the book, I was truly irritated by how Dan Brown kept following the template of Mickey Mouse watch wearing professor + chick-and-professor-rolled-into-one love interest for Langdon + an assassin + secret society. He repeats Langdon’s backstory as to why he wears the watch, has claustrophobia, does laps of the Harvard swimming pool, etc etc every 30 pages – just to ensure that if you start flipping through the book somewhere in the middle, you have a ‘deep understanding’ of Robert Langdon’s character. I’ll keep the review spoiler-free.

Watch The Making of The Lost Symbol, the book with a five million print run

Thing is, Dan Brown’s formula has worn down by now. After The Da Vinci Code this simply seems to be a half-hearted attempt to fulfill a publisher’s contract. Despite being riddled with plot holes, Dan Brown’s previous novels worked because they were fast-paced and exciting on their own accord. In The Lost Symbol, he tries to overdo this by making lame attempts to insert cliffhangers at the end of every five paragraphs. It’s not a compulsive page-turner. Another irritating bit is the overuse of italics. Every second line is in italics. This is done to ‘speak out’ the internal thoughts of a character. We readers love that, man, but for Christ’s sake don’t overdo it man. There is no need to emphasise everything.

Certain phrases are repeated way too often in the book. The number of times something ‘dawns’ on Langdon will make you think he’s orbiting the Earth in a space shuttle rather than moseying around in Washington DC. (Astronauts on a space shuttle see a new ‘sunrise’ / ‘sunset’ every 45 minutes, approximately the same time-frame in which some ‘startling revelation’ ‘dawns upon’ Robert Langdon.) Every time one of these ‘dawning’ epiphanies happens, Langdon becomes a walking-talking Wikipedia entry on said topic which caused of ‘revelation’. Poor Isaac Newton is once again dragged into yet another secret society (this time it’s the Invisible College) and becomes party to fiendish conspiracies. Between being the Grand Poobah of the Royal Order of Water Buffaloes, Freemasons, Invisible College, Priory of Sion, and whichever ‘secret society’ Dan Brown cooks up in his next novel I wonder when did Newton get the time to work out the laws of gravity.

Dan Brown does a volte-face to his attitude towards religion compared to his previous novels. Angels & Demons (the book, not the movie) had reasonably balanced Science vs Religion philosophical discourses. The Da Vinci Code came across as anti-Vatican despite not intending to. The Lost Symbol marks the complete surrender of Dan Brown to religion. The Bible, which was described in The Da Vinci Code as “The greatest story ever sold, rathe than the greatest story ever told“, metamorphoses into Dan Brown’s version of The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything. He does mention Koran, the Bhagvad Gita, Zohar et al too, but more in the tone of extras – bouncers at a nightclub while Jesus & Pals are having a party upstairs. For Freemasons who apparently believe in a non-religious deity, that’s a bit of favouritism, isn’t is Dan-san? Seems that Dan-san can’t take being heckled by bishops any more. Or maybe, like sleazeball Sony Pictures executives, he decided to start atoning for his ‘blasphemies’ in The Da Vinci Code. There is no way this book is starting any controversy. It sucks up to both Freemason and Church ideologies.

On the bright side, the novel does have parts where it shines – most of these involve the assassin Mal’akh and his sheer ruthlessness. As soon as your interest perks up, you’ll find it snuffed out by the standard Dan Brown template story. Even when there are twists in the story, you know there will be a twist – which means it doesn’t really catch you off guard. Like…’killing’ Robert Langdon somewhere after halfway into the novel. You know he’ll be brought back to life somehow, so you aren’t really surprised. If you did a double take in the last sentence at the ‘brought back to life’ bit, well, you’ll need to read the book to understand; the explanation, BTW, involves mice.

My criteria for whether I like a book is “Do I want to read it again?”. Dan Brown’s earlier novels met that criteria, because they were roller-coaster rides that kept you on the edge of your seat till the last page. You Lost Me At The Point Where Dan Brown Sucks Up To The Vatican is a more appropriate title for The Lost Symbol. Dull, irritating – but occasionally brilliant – you should read this book once just so that you don’t remain the only one not to read the book; beyond that, this is a book that must be given a quick burial.

My rating of GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra: B- (Fair)
Cast: Channing Tatum, Sienna Miller, Dennis Quaid, Christopher Eccleston, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Rachel Nichols, Jonathan Pryce, Arnold Vosloo
Directed by: Stephen Sommers
Studio: Paramount Pictures

GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra belongs the same category of movies as Transformers – ‘lovingly’ referred to as ‘war porn’ by critics. An assorted collection of slow-mo shots of military equipment and special-op military forces. Heck, even GI Joe is a Hasbro toy-line – so that was something expected. And with Stephen Sommers – the Mummy guy – at helm, you can’t expect anything other than a popcorn action flick. My interested in this movie was piqued when I watched its trailer. The Eiffel Tower crumbling to bits? If this didn’t beat Transformers in sheer entertainment value, I don’t know what would.

Before I begin the review here’s a bit of trivia, since it has been pointed out to me that I’m the most likely person to know random facts. Random Fact Of The Day is that Sienna Miller’s boobs caught fire while the movie was being shot. Details are sketchy as to whether an explosion was involved or they spontaneously self-combusted due to their hotness. Thankfully, as it transpired, no valuable assets were lost.

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Watch the trailer for GI Joe: Rise of the Cobra

I admit that I’m not familiar with GI Joe lore. I played with GI Joe toys when I was a kid but didn’t really gave a damn about who belonged to which organization. Just let them loose (in your imagination of course) to bash each other up. I’m pretty sure our Indian shores haven’t had the (mis)fortune of being bombarded with Joe merchandising such as comics either. So my experience in watching the movie is that of a n00b to Joe-lore.

The entire story of the movie can be summed up thusly: GI Joe is a special unit comprising of military personnel from across the world who ‘try to beat up bad guys’. The bad guys are M.A.R.S. Industries, who are contracted by NATO to develop nanobots that can eat through metal. They develop the weapon, and then for some convoluted reason the head of that company plans to steal it from himself while it is enroute to be delivered to NATO from his factory. Why not just make some for himself? Because then you wouldn’t have a big budget movie, dummy. Anyway, he succeeds in stealing the nanobot-equipped warheads from himself, decides to launch them from a secret aquatic base under the North Pole – and it’s up to our ‘average Joes’ to save the world.

Not fake. Look, even that guy behind her is staring.

The movie is almost completely CGI. Everything except for the actors is shot on a green/blue backdrop. While the quality of CGI is good, it is quite obvious whenever you look at a scene that it is fake. (Note – not referring to you-know-what in the picture above.) Without the stylistic over-the-top-ness used in the likes of Sin City, GI Joe feels as if you are watching someone else play a video game. Stephen Sommers peppers the movie with bullet-time shots a la ‘300’…except he does it on a ‘grander’ scale using attack helicopters and whatnot.

"Son, this is NOT a serious movie. Please drop that poker face."

Acting is average at best. Honestly, the batshit insane story does not give anyone room to play around and even think about delivering a serious performance. Nobody seems to have informed this fact to Dennis Quaid though, who miserably drags through every scene as if he’s starring in some poignant war-drama. Many flashbacks in the movie; most of them done in the most juvenile and cheesy manner possible. Rest of the cast is completely in-flow and enjoying working on the movie. Most actors will come out with their reputation pretty unscathed.

Sienna Miller GI Joe movie — Nobody complaining...

Sommers seems to have found a new muse in Sienna Miller. He rivals Michael Bay (and Bay’s fascination with Megan Fox) by ensuring that Sienna Miller is shown in every second frame. Just like Michael Bay, he devotes a lot of time to, erm, ‘close-up shots’. Nobody in the movie theatre complained though. 😉 (Which reminds me , if you want to watch a movie in Delhi, watch it at DT Cinemas if possible. Plush seats, and the whole theatre is practically empty all the time. It’s like watching a movie in your own personal theatre. Food is crap though, and overpriced at that.)

The story, as I said, batshit insane. In a flashback, a soldier is sent into a terrorist bunker to ‘shoot down those bastards’…when an airstrike has already been ordered on the building. Why do you need to shoot someone and then drop bombs on them. Probably just to say you can. So this soldier goes in, sees some weapons experiment being shown on a computer and decides to transfer a webcast on to his pen drive. GI Joe has opened my eyes. I never knew US soldiers carried Kingston pen drives while in the middle of a battlefield in Somalia. When he plugs in the pen drive, he first scans it with Norton AntiVirus. Such dedication is truly commendable. Putting his life in the line of fire, to ensure that his pen drive is virus-free, so that when he gets back to the US of A Pentagon computers don’t get infected.

Or take the scene at the Arctic Circle. So they have a huge fucking military base the bottom of the ocean, with huge towers and shit which nobody seems to have noticed…despite the fact that nuclear submarines regularly patrol the area. No possible explanation is forthcoming, except maybe M.A.R.S. Industries borrowed Harry Potter’s Invisibility Cloak for a while. An epic battle happens between the Joes and the bad guys. Many underwater torpedoes later, the Joes decide to blast the ice directly above the Bad Guy Base. Soon, massive blocks of ice fall to the ocean bottom, crushing the Bad Guy Base. Erm, so why exactly again did the ice fall down like blocks of stone? Isn’t the fact that ice floats on water the whole fucking principle behind icebergs, which was then turned into a multimillion money mint movie called The Titanic?

In one scene, Bad Guys Inc are driving towards Eiffel Tower in a vehicle and plan to fire a nanobot-equipped warhead at it to reduce the monument to dust. The Joes chase the Bad Vehicle, and the amount of destruction they cause simply in pursuit of the vehicle is probably greater than what the Bad Guys put together could ever achieve. Such dedication, you see, to stop the Bad Guys that they readily kill / maim innocent civilians and wreck property in the process.

You don't get it, do you? NOBODY is complaining.

Many parts of the story are inspired by Star Wars. A clone army similar to the initial batch of Imperial Stormtroopers is created and they are ‘made fearless’ by injecting them with nanobots. (Don’t ask, don’t ask…) The icing on the cake is a Darth Vader lookalike who eventually becomes Cobra Commander, complete with a face mask and rasping voice.

If you watch this movie with a few friends, this unmitigated disaster can be turned into a laugh riot for the sheer cheesiness and stupidity of the whole enterprise. In that sense, it isn’t a lot unlike Snakes On A Plane. So bad, that it’s good.