Review
NATIONAL TREASURE
Starring Nicolas Cage, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel
Directed by Jon Turteltaub
Opens Friday, November 19
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The previews for National Treasure may have you thinking that it's a new action-adventure where Nicholas Cage uses his knowledge of American history to find the greatest treasure of all time. In reality, the film is a warmed-over cash grab that sees everyone – from producer Jerry Bruckheimer right on down – swiping whatever they can from wherever they can and jamming it into this PG-rated swashbuckler.
Cage plays treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates as both an intelligent and concerned historian and as a hyperactive, pseudo-action-hero time bomb (imagine a cross between his characters from It Could Happen to You and Face/Off). Hot on the trail of clues that will lead him to the greatest treasure ever known, his mood swings baffle not only the audience, but his sidekick Riley (Justin Barta, doing his best Topher Grace impression). But I guess that's OK ’cause the quest for the treasure has made Ben a little loopy. You see, for generations the Gates family has been looking for a fortune hidden centuries ago by the Freemasons and Ben has realized that the key to finding it has been written in invisible ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Don't buy it? Neither does historian Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger), until a series of unfortunate events has her on the run with Ben and the legendary document. Did I mention that there is another treasure hunter trying to scoop Gates? Yup, you can't have an action movie without a bad guy and you know Ian Howe (Sean Bean) is bad because he never works for anything, has a lot of money and doesn't have any of the good lines.
The treasure map leads everyone involved from Washington, D.C. to Philadelphia to New York with a little U.S. history lesson thrown in so that lazy teachers can supplement their curriculum with this film on days when they don't feel like teaching. With each destination, another clue is revealed and more credibility goes missing from the screen. I guess I can buy the fact that there is an invisible map on the back of a 228-year-old piece of parchment. What I can't believe is that all the academics in the film handle it with care one minute and risk destroying it by flaunting the thing in public the next. Torches that haven't been lit in centuries ignite immediately and stay lit for hours. People that are smart enough to decipher the clues to the treasure are too dumb to realize that none of them make sense anyway. And that isn't even the film’s biggest problem.
If the cryptic clues and frantic travel itinerary sound familiar, they should. It turns out that National Treasure is nothing more than Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade with slightly better special effects. From Cage’s smart cool-under-pressure hero to the disapproving curmudgeon father (Jon Voight) to the pale blonde with a slight German accent (Diane Kruger), everything in this movie is rehashed. Why it took six people to develop the script, I'll never know. Tack on a fizzling love story and a performance by Harvey Keitel that translates into nothing more than a paycheque and you have a movie that is destined for a long life of Sunday afternoon reruns on the Superstation. And why not. It belongs there with all the films it has ripped off. |
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