Cast: Nicholas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, John Voight, Helen Mirren

Director: John Turtletaub

Screenplay: The WIbberleys

Genre: Action/Adventure

Running time: 2 hr 5 mins



CRITIQUE:


The holiness of movies comes from the basic principles of plotting. Let’s amid it, a boring plot more or less bores an audience to death. Such is the case of the second input to the NATIONAL TREASURE franchise named BOOK OF SECRETS, which even sounded more like a Gothic, mystery-adventure actioner than this stilted, slipshod of a film. However, let’s ogle at the fact that Jerry Bruckheimer and John Turtletaub’s intentions were good, that is to make a wholesome family-oriented adventure film. There’s also no denying that beneath that aim, there are cashing cows trying to squeeze some more juice of the fruit they harvested back in 2004’s first NATIONAL TREASURE flick.


The result is almost like a carbon-copy of the first film. Lose the first film’s plot, recycle the template, add in new locations and voila, a sequel. Bankroll pours in. It can be assessed that the scribes of this film have perhaps tried hard to glue the intriguing enigmas together to form a coherent plot, involving Lincoln’s assassination plot, lost assassin’s diary, desks made out of from a ship – while all true, its predisposition of a treasure hunt wallop is just as improbable as it is gimmicky. And gimmicks do we get, when the nationalistic treasure hunter Ben Gates (Nicholas Cage) and his cohorts, which comprises of Diane Kruger and Justin Bartha, set the action one after another, along dialogues which are as poorly written as the first one. The Buckingham Palace ranting scene is one perfect example.


Action set pieces are sometimes promising: the car chase around London is a technical wonder (car chases are rarely shot in London due to its narrow and utterly busy streets) but nevertheless pedestrian. Then it all goes INDIANA JONES as the quest for the City of Gold goes on, filled with improbability. Right, the search for the hummingbird mark on the stone is very well, but with the use of four bottles of water? In the film it took them less than a minute to find the clue. Not only that, but TREASURE is a senseless parade of a theorist’s wet dream and a pageantry of actors, Nicholas Cage not really delivering anything other than forced dialogues. Even Helen Mirren as his mum was underused, albeit seeing having fun swinging from a cliff to another.


VERDICT:

Like most sequel, it goes horribly wrong. The intention of ante-upping the actioner potential results in merely a replica of its predecessor. NATIONAL TREASURE is forgettable, with all that tasteless action and forced cleverness that never quite fully delivers.



RATING: C