In this day and age being called Indiana Jones Lite is not necessarily a bad thing. National Treasure 2: Book of Secrets brings back academic turned treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) to defend his family's honor and find some long lost treasure in the process. While the movie is not a spectacular, visionary piece of fiction, it is an entertaining ride that lets you have fun while following in Gates' footsteps.
The Movie
National Treasure 2 starts off looking at the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln then flashes forward to present day where Gates is giving a lecture on the assassination and examining John Wilkes Booth's famous diary. During the lecture Mitch Wilkinson (Ed Harris) interrupts him and states that he has a missing page from the diary that proves one of Gates' ancestors was privy to the plot and may have been directly involved. This starts a globe-spanning adventure that has Gates and his friends trying to restore his family name and unveil a deep-seated conspiracy as they go.
Joining Gates in the adventure is his father Patrick (Jon Voight) who is even more distraught then Benjamin at the news that their ancestor could have been a traitor. The Gates family begins the journey to prove their family's innocence by working out a code on the back of the newly discovered page. Gates brings his technologically inclined friend Riley Poole (Justin Bartha) and his estranged girlfriend Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) back into the mix in order to help solve the mystery.
National Treasure 2 is unarguably a fun movie, but is full of enough cliches, convenient moments, and unquestioning acceptance that you just shake your head at some points. Ben Gates is more CSI Miami's (incredibly annoying) Horatio Caine than he is Indiana Jones. His character is obviously modeled after the iconic Indiana Jones (a teacher, historian, and adventurer) but he is always right, in a nearly inhuman way, and lets people know it much like CSI's Horatio. What I do like is that the movie recognizes this trait and that is why he and Abigail split; Ben Gates always knows what to do and never asks, but simply states what needs to be done.
Quibbles aside, the story is interesting and this chapter in the franchise takes us from America to Paris to London and back again and the set pieces work to add a larger than life feel to the movie that is fun to watch. Gates and crew pull off some amazing feats, from sneaking into the Queen's study to kidnapping the US president (sort of) and make you smile the whole time. I found that once I just sat back and turned my logic centers off (really, there are tons of ludicrous leaps of logic, convenient happenings, and quick acceptances of situations) the movie was really quite enjoyable.
.jpg?t=20120527181101)
Article comments