Sean Connery is in majestic form here as the Franciscan friar who, with novice Christian Slater, investigates a series of murders in a remote 14th-century abbey, incurring the wrath of vicious inquisitor F Murray Abraham in the process. Director Jean-Jacques Annaud has decoded Umberto Eco's cryptic bestseller with an eye-blinkingly ornate visual style. While the inhabitants of the abbey are mostly as grotesque as gargoyles, the Holmesian figure of Connery dominates and elucidates with the kind of deductive brilliance that Conan Doyle's sleuth was to display centuries later - though Watson would have found this riddle not at all elementary.

14th-century Franciscan monk William of Baskerville and his young novice arrive at a conference to find that several monks have been murdered under mysterious circumstances. To solve the crimes, William must rise up against the Church's authority and fight the shadowy conspiracy of monastery monks using only his intelligence; which is considerable.