‘Treasure’ chest a little empty
The fun of going to the movies sometimes is suspending the need
for realism. It can be fun to watch explosions, high-speed car
chases and unlikely love blossom. But when the movie doesn’t pull
it off well, it can leave viewers simply confused or let down. The
latest Nicolas Cage vehicle,
”
National Treasure: Book of Secrets,
”
is a mixed bag.
‘Treasure’ chest a little empty
The fun of going to the movies sometimes is suspending the need for realism. It can be fun to watch explosions, high-speed car chases and unlikely love blossom. But when the movie doesn’t pull it off well, it can leave viewers simply confused or let down. The latest Nicolas Cage vehicle, “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” is a mixed bag.
The film is a sequel to the 2004 hit in which Ben Gates (Cage) and his father Patrick (Jon Voight) discover treasure in the most unexpected of places – the United States. When trying to remember the details of the first film, my mind kept confusing that film with “The DaVinci Code,” since both of them rely on decoding ciphers and searching for clues. Eventually, it became clear that I didn’t really need to remember the first film to get the new one. Though the cast is the same, and the plot similar, there isn’t much connection between the two.
In the latest treasure hunt film, more is at stake than just riches – Gates’ family name is on the line. After speaking at a symposium about John Wilkes Booth’s search for a hidden treasure, Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris) approaches Gates with a missing page from Booth’s diary. The page somehow insinuates that Gates’ great-great great grandfather was somehow involved with the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. To prove his ancestor’s innocence, Ben must now find a hidden treasure as proof his family never had anything to do with it.
The original cast of characters is back, along with a few additional players. Justin Bartha plays Gates’ sidekick Riley Poole, who has just written a book about treasure hunting. Though Gates was happily in love with Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) at the end of the last movie, the two are separated at the start of this one. It soon becomes clear that their fighting is mostly just a way to move some plot points forward, and it is never very clear what they are fighting about in the first place.
The shining star in the film is Helen Mirren, who plays Professor Emily Appleton, Gates’ mother. Mirren is an academy award-winning actress – she won for the 2006 film “The Queen” – and her acting chops make her a great foil for Patrick Gates. The couple are estranged, but they all pull together to help Ben clear the family name.
While the film moves along at a good pace at first, by the time we get to the real drama it is almost over. One of the problems with the film is that there are huge plot holes in the movie. It never becomes very clear how finding a treasure is going to clear the Gates name. It is also not clear why Wilkinson, who serves as a bad guy in the film, wants to find the treasure and the weak explanation at the very end of the movie falls flat.
There are several subplots in the movie that don’t really work. For one, the screenwriters Cormac and Marianne Wibberley toy with the idea that the Presidents have a secret book that contains all the countries secrets that is passed down from presidency to presidency. Now really, is it believeable that Reagan would have just handed off a book to Clinton and Clinton to Bush Jr? Somehow that seems implausible. Plus, except for some of the big gaffs during the Iraq war, why would presidents actually record things they want to keep secret?
Perhaps the hardest thing to believe is that the mythical Mayan temple of gold would be found in the United States. Didn’t the Mayans live a lot further south than South Dakota?
Other than that, the film feels a bit like a wild goose chase as Gates and his cronies travel from Washington, D.C. to Paris to London and back to the United States. With each new clue, they are one step closer to the answer, but with each new clue viewers may find their minds wandering from the plot.
