National Treasure: Book of Secrets
By Matthew Rodgers
National Treasure shot out of the blocks in 2004 with its Da Vinci Code lite formula of enjoyable action set-pieces loosely strung together with maguffin fuelled exposition (The Jerry Bruckheimer method) to huge world-wide box office takings. Hollywood never turns its nose up at a cash-cow so inevitably a franchise is born and Nicolas Cage accompanied by his latest hair piece can return alongside John Voight, Diane Kruger, Ed Harris, and amazingly Helen Mirren (?!?) to make up history amidst the explosions and location shooting.
Not a lot has changed this time round, Ben Gates (Cage – Ghostrider, The Weatherman) is no longer with Abigail (Kruger) and makes a living peddling the events of the first instalment at successful lectures. It’s during one of his talks that an old treasure hunting rival played by Harris, in a role similar to his well intentioned general from The Rock, instigates Gates’ ancestors in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. This time it’s personal. So, taking in London, Washington, and Paris, as well as a presidential kidnapping that defies belief we get to do it all over again, but is it as much fun?
The answer is yes and no. The plot is still hokum bordering on codswallop and smacks of script meetings at which someone will have uttered “what if now there is a secret compartment in a table, but wait, it’s in The White House and it conceals the location of the secret temple?” and Justin Bartha as the wise-cracking side-kick is just as annoying and unfunny as you remember.
The rest of the intrepid explorers are a lot more enjoyable to spend time with; Cage, no matter his iffy choices of barnet and acting roles always injects enthusiasm into every performance and is no different here. The big surprise (or not considering her CV) is how fantastic Helen Mirren is in her limited role; sparking with Voight she seems to relish the lack of pomposity that is required from her usual outings and gets some of the films choice comedic lines.
National Tresure: Book of Secrets is the type of film that would require the BBFC classification that “brains should be left in the foyer”, that’s not a damning indictment of a bad film, just a warning to know what to expect. More akin to a theme park ride it has set-pieces ranging from the uninspired cut-and-paste car chase through London to the brilliant balancing act of the final third which is a cross between the entirety of The Goonies and a more expensive version of the 90’s show The Crystal Maze.
More ambitious than the first but as with all cases of sequelitis it feels slightly more bloated than the breezy original, and clocking in at over two hours we could have done without one or two of the less-than-cryptic clues. There is no secret to why National Treasure works; it’s slick, expensive and does what it says on the box and you’ve only get yourself to blame if you open it to take a look.
