Albinos Condemn 'Da Vinci' Assassin

AP reports The notion of Christ as a family man is not the only raw nerve "The Da Vinci Code" has touched. Albinos are bothered that one of their own has yet again been depicted as a villain. Dan Brown's best seller begins its worldwide debut Wednesday with Tom Hanks as the cryptologist pursuing a 2,000-year-old mystery that could reveal Jesus and Mary Magdalene were married and that the Vatican covered it up.

This is serious. Offending Christians in general, and Catholics in particular is something that we are used to, but now we find they have offended albinos. That should be almost as bad as offended Muslims. Maybe they will now pull the film from the theaters. After all, critics panned it at the Cannes Film Festival: Hollywood trade magazine, Daily Variety, gave the Code a blistering review; saying it verged on "dull" and regretting "a palpable lack of chemistry" between co-stars Tom Hanks and Audrey Tautou of France.

Among his co-stars is Paul Bettany, the British actor playing monk- assassin Silas, an albino with red eyes who carries out a series of bloody murders to secure the secret of the Holy Grail, a trove of lost Christian documents that could prove Jesus had wed. Critics cite a long list of albinos cast as heavies by Hollywood: The dreadlocked twins in "The Matrix Reloaded," a powder-haired hit man in the Chevy Chase-Goldie Hawn crime romp "Foul Play," the pasty zombies in "The Omega Man," a sadistic killer in "Cold Mountain," even the wicked executioner in the fairy-tale comedy "The Princess Bride."