National Treasure: Book of Secrets

Ok, I know I said I'd write a review for every flick I see from now on regardless, but for some reason I just didn't feel the need to extricate my thoughts on Con Air, or The 6th Day, or Death Race 2000 (I mean what could I possibly say that hasn't been said already?), so that idea's out the window instead I'll just stick to movies in the theatre or if a flick really grabs my attention outside of that. I know you guys are all dreadfully disappointed.


So, to the matter at hand: my take on National Treasure: Book of Secrets. Long story short it was entertaining and if you enjoyed the first you'll like this one as well. That being said it was a whole lot stupider than the original and really banks on the audience's will to just lay back and accept certain things (yet when I expect girls to do that I don't make millions of dollars at the box office, no I get another restraining order). So why was this film dumbed down compared to the original about billions of dollars worth of gold and artifacts lying undiscovered in a five mile deep whole under a church in New York led their by a map on the back of the Declaration of Independence found by some invisible spectacles made by Ben Franklin (also there was a huge explosion on a Colonial ship trapped in the ice in the middle of the arctic circle)? Simple it was less believable.

This time around good ol' Ben Gates (Nicolas Cage) is finding an ancient Native American city of gold which everyone from the Spanish conquistadors, to the Confederacy, to William Custer sought after. And of course to do that he, along with his usual gang of misfits, must kidnap the president in order to gain access to the BOOK OF SECRETS (insert dramatic music here). So how is this flick the retarded cousin of its predecessor? First off (also I'll probably be ruining some aspects of the film [such as they find the treasure. SHOCKER!]) the treasure is Olmec (the South American pre-Columbian native people, not the talking stone face from Legends of the Hidden Temple) so I'm confused why they would travel thousands of miles north to hide it in South Dakota. Also it is never explained why Queen Victoria managed to be the only person to attain the secret riddle required to finding the city of gold in the Black Hills or why they decided to hide clues to it with the help of French architects? Oh, because they wanted the South to win the Civil War, of course. And might I add, that Ben pseudo-kidnaps the president in order to convince him to have access to the BOOK OF SECRETS, which he does, but the president will not let him go to jail only if he finds the treasure. Why kind of a dick move is that? Sure I believe you about the treasure, and will help you by telling you how to get to the BOOK OF SECRETS, but if you get caught before you find it, despite the fact that I believe you and you put me in no harm's way, I won't help you. Was this just done so Ben would have to avoid the cops again while finding the treasure... again? What the hell fictional president, what the hell?

But whatever, let's just suspend our beliefs for the next two hours and not worry about it. However, the reason Ben Gates is finding the treasure is to prove that his great-granddaddy was not a co-conspirator in the assassination Lincoln (Abraham Lincoln). Maybe I just don't understand these things but how does finding the treasure exonerate him? I mean regardless if the treasure does exist who's to say he wasn't helping the assassinators? The standard bad-guy (Ed Harris) does apologize for raking Ben's ancestor's credibility in the mud, but his name in John Wilkes Booth's diary doesn't change his involvement. Maybe I just zoned out when they told the audience how it redeems him, but I still don't get it. So that's my problem with the story, but you know I'm a stickler for things that make sense and don't have plot holes so large that light can't even escape from their gravitational pull, but like I said it's enjoyable.

The only other issue (I feel like writing about) was Ed Harris's villain character. The writer's tried to give him depth by not making him mindlessly evil or just wanting money or whatever. No, instead they set him up with a back story similar to Ben's (it was his great-granddaddy that got the letter from Queen Victoria that led them to the treasure, so his entire family through the generations has been looking for it. Sound familiar? That's rhetorical, don't answer that), so that we can empathize with him, but he's evil because he implicated Ben's grandfather (or just showed the truth, again I'm not exactly sure how that worked) so that Ben would need to find the treasure to prove his innocence, so that Ed Harris would then swoop in and steal the treasure and claim he found it, or whatever. We never really hear what his evil machinations were actually to be. So what we're supposed to see is a conflicted character that just fell to the dark side of the treasure hunting ways in order to save his ancestor's names who know doubt lost the same respect Ben's did with this treasure hunting of theirs. They attempt to break outside the cookie cutter characters that were prevalent in the first one (protagonist, antagonist, comic relief, love interest, old guy, Harvey Keitel, etc.) by creating a bad guy who isn't all bad, but with whom Ben (and thereby we) can related with. However, he just comes off like the writer's wrote him two ways (one where he's typical villain, and one where he is a desperate treasure hunter who resorts to less-than-scrupulous tactics) decided to combine the two and just chose certain scenes from each script not re-writing the whole thing so that it would fit. Also killing him by him kind of sacrificing himself to save everyone only after his plan to have Ben stay behind to save everyone was dues ex machinaed (look it up) and it was the only option left was a clear cop out on the writer's part. We want to show he's good deep down, but also selfish but only because of the generarations of failing ot find the treasure, yet we can't have him live because then the bad guy would have gotten away with it, and the other characters would have to make some sort of decision about turning him in or have him kill them so they wouldn't turn him in which would truly make him a evil, so we'll create this elaborate scenario that will take care of all that. Well done.

So in closing stupid, but entertaining. Fairly intriguing popcorn flick. But still incredibly moronic so five out of ten.


Rating: 5/10