The Lost Symbol: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		2.0
Video		3.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		2.5

The Lost Symbol: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie Review

Reviewed by Martin Liebman March 21, 2023

There is no denying that Dan Brown's name has been a standard within literary circles and the film world now for many years. His Robert Langdon novels set the publishing world on fire and remain hits in print while the character, played by Tom Hanks in the big-screen adaptations The Da Vinci Code, Angels & Demons, and Inferno, brought further attention to, awareness of, praise for Brown's work. With the recent boom in television programming, it's something of a surprise that it took this long for Brown's signature character to reach the small screen. With The Lost Symbol, Brown's 2009 novel is finally realized for audiences, though this time not with Tom Hanks in the lead. Rather, Hanks is replaced by Ashley Zukerman. The show can't get off the ground, though, struggling to find tone, pace, purpose, heart, or anything that would differentiate it from other, similar rote content. It's watchable but...it's not exactly memorable.

College professor, symbologist, and all-around smart guy Robert Langdon has his life interrupted when he learns that his friend and mentor, Peter Solomon (Eddie Izzard), goes missing. Quickly, Langdon finds himself immersed in a dark, deadly, and shadowy conspiracy involving Freemasonry that will challenge his academic pedigree and change his very soul. Langdon teams with Peter's daughter, Katherine (Valorie Curry), for a mission that grows increasingly complex, dangerous, and personal the closer he gets to the truth.

There are a number of reasons why The Lost Symbol never gets off the ground, the first of which is the feeling of stale, derivative content that drives the story. Somehow, the show misses the sense of mystery and engagement from the novel, telling instead a flat, linear story that is populated by puzzles and symbols and the process of deciphering and so on and so forth, but the material simply feels trite, with the general layout, the pace, and the way the characters solve the puzzles simply leaving the show feeling as if it moves the characters from one puzzle or object in need of deciphering to the next with little sense of narrative glue, connective tissues, or pick-a-descriptor. There's no heart or soul to the show; it's terribly rote, flat, and dull. Even when there is "mystery" there's very little feel for "mystery," no sense of danger or real potential for failure, just a straightforward, mechanical movement from one situation and scenario to the next. All of this is exacerbated by the contrast between the novel's setting as a sequel of sorts to The Da Vinci Code and the show's insistence of using it as something of a reboot and prequel instead.

So, the show is very linear and predicable despite the emphasis on the unseen, unknown, puzzles, and things of that nature. Worse, the characters are lifeless forms filling the frame and reciting dialogue with little sense of self or internal depth. At least Hanks was able to bring some life, some spark, a tangible soul, to Robert Langdon. Here, the character is hopelessly one dimensional, the dialogue and backstory are haplessly and haphazardly assembled with little concern for narrative flow or audience engagement, and what worked in the novel in terms of volume of narrative is simply left here to die, offered in unsatisfying and confusing bursts of content that don't offer a satisfactory and full picture for the audience to get behind and give purpose to the content. So, at least part of the acting fault cannot be laid at Ashley Zukerman's feet, though he is clearly lacking a desire to at least try to form a soul for the soulless character he portrays. Supporting cast is equally monotone and tone deaf, simply pushing through with little sense of flair, flavor, or inhabitation of character, though there's not much to inhabit beyond making the actors vessels to deliver dialogue and move around on the screen.

The Lost Symbol: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Paramount's 1080p transfer is fine. The show is not at all visually arresting. There's not a lot of color extremes, favoring bland, flat, desaturated colors that are warm here, cool there, without much in the way of neutral contrast or natural temperatures. Lower light shots, scenes, and sequences are frequently noisy, teetering on bothersome. At least the encode is decent; there's some light compression issues, but not a lot of banding. White levels do not stand out and black levels are only adequate with some push to crush and poor shadow detail in evidence. Flesh tones are at the mercy of whatever lighting and color grading is at work in any given shot, scene, or sequence. Clarity is adequate and nothing to write home about. Audiences will enjoy nice baseline detail to faces, clothes, and environments, but nothing that really pushes the format or dazzles the eyes. This is a fairly bland looking show from a production standpoint and it translates about to the level of expectation on Blu-ray.

The Lost Symbol: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Like the show and the video, the DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 lossless soundtrack is entirely forgettable. It's not bad, it's just bland. The presentation satisfies basic criteria, offering good basic clarity to all elements and adequate stage engagement levels. The content holds largely along the front with sporadic, but not regular, surround work. The subwoofer is never used prodigiously, either, but neither does the material really scream out for blast after blast of bass bliss. Musical definition is solid, spacing is sound, and the score comes through with sufficient immersion and realism. Support effects, whether prominent cues or gentler support elements, find their way into the track with good feel for placement and balance. Dialogue propels the bulk of the content, and it is presented with firm front-center placement.

The Lost Symbol: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

Bare bones. No extras are included: no video extras, no commentaries, and the package doesn't even include digital codes or a slipcover.

The Lost Symbol: The Complete Series Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

The Lost Symbol certainly reads better than it plays out for this short-lived TV adaptation. The show is a clunker with little going for it, lacking the density, depth, characterization, and broader content found in the novel. The show teeters on playing like TV shovel ware, slogging through flat characters and a bland story that might have played a fair bit better with higher production values, a film length and pace, and Tom Hanks, though certainly none of his Robert Langdon movies amounted to much, either, but all were clearly better than this. Paramount's two-disc Blu-ray presentation is featureless. Video and audio presentations suffice, at best. This is just not a satisfying release at all. Skip it and read the book series instead.