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December 21, 2007
National Treasure: Book of Secrets
(out of four)
At some point in the future, film scholars will look back and label this as the era of intense leading men, with Tom Cruise and Nicolas Cage as prime examples. Both men act as though they're gripping high-voltage cables between their teeth, which, in the case of the National Treasure franchise, is certainly a curious choice. Does bug-eyed intensity really mesh with Indiana Jones-meets-The Da Vinci Code-style historical fetishism?
It's a good thing Cage's character, Benjamin Franklin Gates, is a patriot, because he seems to have no trouble getting in and out of the world's most protected spots, from the queen's private chambers in Buckingham Palace to the Oval Office. Not even the highest-security room at the Library of Congress can deter him, even though it protects a book of incalculable value.
That volume -- which contains evidence of Area 51, the truth behind the Kennedy assassination and countless other conspiracy goodies, all labeled for the president's eyes only -- is the "Book of Secrets" touted in the movie's subtitle. It's a juicy new target for Gates to pursue, and in keeping with the original National Treasure, this cornball sequel wrings preposterous fantasy from between the pages of history. Did you know the Statue of Liberty hides a clue to locating Cibola, the Lost City of Gold? Or that Mount Rushmore was designed to disguise it?
But revisionist-history hounds shouldn't get their hopes up just yet. As it turns out, the Book of Secrets is little more than a fancy MacGuffin (Hitchcock's pet name for whatever shiny distraction he'd dangle before an audience to get them to follow his hero) in Gates' latest scavenger hunt. That means that once Gates gets his hands on the book, the audience will never get a peek inside, since he's otherwise distracted with a bogus quest to clear his family's name.
It seems a suspicious Southern goon (Ed Harris) has emerged with a page from John Wilkes Booth's diary that implicates a Gates ancestor in the plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln. Wouldn't it be perfect if the Book of Secrets proved otherwise, if some key piece to the Gates family tree lay buried in this Holy Grail of historical relics? But no, the book is just one clue in another breathless chain of absurd logic puzzles that keeps Cage operating on the brink of cardiac arrest.
In retrospect, it's sometimes hard to comprehend that National Treasure, like Pirates of the Caribbean before it, was an unexpected hit from producer Jerry Bruckheimer, since the concept is such a no-brainer. And Bruckheimer, ever the showman, has upped the ante here -- from adding flashy new locations to the stunt casting of Helen Mirren as Gates' estranged mother. Not since Candy have so many Oscar honorees participated in something so frivolous (I count Cage, Harris, Mirren, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel). You could certainly do worse than hire so many serious actors to turn cartwheels through American history. Now if only Cage would tone it down a little.
[as featured in The Fort Worth Star-Telegram]
Posted by Peter Debruge on