NATIONAL TREASURE by Jon Turteltaub
Produced by Jerry Bruckheimer – this is a warning!
When you imagine a Jerry Bruckheimer-movie, you imagine a loud, dumb, entertaining, occasionally funny movie with lots of action and explosions.
This one delivers only one of the expected features – it’s definitly dumb. In addition, it’s dull, kinda boring, and dumb …
The story: Nicolas Cage (sleepwalking) is Benjamin Franklin Gates (!), whose family is searching for the treasure of the Knights Templar since generations. He is joined by Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger – wooden) and Riley (Justin Bartha – comic relief, unfortunately not funny at all), and his father (Jon Voight). Competing treasure hunter is Ian (Sean Bean in standard bad-guy-mode), always on Benjamin’s trail and not hesitating to use brute force to find the treasure first.
It’s all there – the invisible map on the backside of the US Declaration of Independence (“You cannot steal it – it’s the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE!” Yawn – i’m sooo impressed), ancient riddles (watch Nic Cage jump to wild conclusions based on them and marvel – he’s always right on the spot, no matter how far-fetched the conclusion), underground tombs (how lucky they never discovered this huge cavern under New York when they built the subway system), and another serious plot-hole every 10-15 minutes.
I really, really love conspiracy theories, stories about the Knights Templar and freemasonry and stuff like this, but to make such an uninteresting movie with a total lack of suspense based on these subjects is almost an art in itself.
Avoid – better spend your money on the Indiana-Jones-Trilogy DVD and have some real fun!
May 23rd, 2006 at 4:21 pm
[…] All in all the film is not badly acted and still a gazillion times better than NATIONAL TREASURE, but suffers from a totally unimaginative script and direction and a lack of originality, so only one burning question remains: What was the purpose of making this film? Read the book(s). […]