Movie Reviews: National Treasure
Where
to begin? National Treasure is a film that attempts to
break new ground in that, to date there have been no great treasure
hunting movies set within the borders of the United States.
There is however a reason for this. America is only slightly
over 200 years old and that's hardly enough time
to develop any sort of mythos to make a lost fortune really
lost. 200 years is more of the amount of time it takes
for
a treasure to be misplaced. I mean it wouldn't be very
thrilling for Indiana Jones to be cavorting around New
Jersey hunting for a gold statue. Lara Croft would never roam
the
Great Plains searching for the lost fortunes of a tribe
of Indians (“I found it! It's a buffalo pelt!”)
Nevertheless,
National Treasure plows forward. The movie starts in a flashback
with
our hero, Benjamin Franklin Gates, as a child,
being told the story of the family legacy, that of hidden treasure.
We then have a flashback within the flashback, which I’m
sure violates some law of the space time continuum, about the
treasure, which is where the movie begins to go wrong. The entire
concept of the movie fails the simple logic test.
The treasure, as the story goes, was first discovered by six
knights during the crusades, who upon realizing the great fortune
of the treasure decided it was too much for any one person to
have, as that amount of riches would make one person much too
powerful. So they decide to move it and hide it for all eternity,
thus forming an alliance that would one day become the Freemasons
(not to be confused with the Stonecutters from the Simpsons).
Okay, lets
pause for a second and think, the *six* knights, decided there
was too
much treasure for *one* person. Hello guys,
I’m no math genius, but split it between the six of you!
It’s called division!
The treasure reappears and disappears through history, and every
time it appears it gets added too, and then disappears again,
always rehidden by Freemasons. This happens mainly to give the
treasure some long history since America has a short history,
and this story needs the added credibility. Eventually in colonial
times, the treasure made its way to America. Yes, this massive
treasure somehow made it across the Atlantic in wooden ships
undetected and unstolen.
As fate
would have it, many of America’s founding fathers
were Freemasons, so in their spare time between planning the
framework of the country and fighting the revolutionary war,
they decide to hide the treasure. Never mind that the colonial
army couldn’t afford real guns, uniforms, clothing, food
or other basic military necessities, we’re burying that
treasure by gum and saving it for a rainy day!
Grandpa
tells the young lad he knows this because his Grandpa’s
Grandpa was the stable boy for the last living signee of the
Declaration of Independence told him about it on his deathbed.
Yes, several hundred years of strict secrecy revealed to the
nearest stable boy. But unfortunately, he neglected to tell anything
more than he needed to look for something named Charlotte. Dad
(played by Jon Voight) hears grandpa telling the story and gets
mad because he doesn’t want his son wasting his life like
he did, or his dad did. Perhaps it’s just my opinion, but
if you donated have your DNA to creating Angelina Jolie, that
is not a life wasted.
We’re five minutes into the movie and I’m
already annoyed at the plot.
So fast-forward
to the present. A grown up Ben Gates played by Nick Cage (Played
by Nick Cage, yes I know him well enough
to call him Nick … do you?), the guy who played Alec, the
good spy turned bad, in “Goldeneye” and a bunch of
flunkies are playing around on a set leftover from “The
Day After Tomorrow”. They hop out of their artic crawlers,
dig in the snow and wouldn’t you know the first place they
did they find a copy of the book Charlotte’s Web. Actually
that would have been slightly more believable than what actually
happened, they actually found the nameplate to a ship, named
Charlotte. Not the mast, the stern, the poop deck or anything
else, as soon as they dig in a vast artic wasteland, they find
. . . the name plate.
So they
get on board the Charlotte and there’s no treasure.
Not surprising since it’s the first ten minutes of the
movie. They do however find a pipe, which Nick breaks to find
another clue that tells them to steal the Declaration of Independence
because there is an invisible map is on the back. Alec ponders
for a moment, and declares “That makes perfect sense; they
wanted to make sure the map was hidden, but was on something
important enough that it would be saved and protected.” Much
to my surprise, that explanation sort of makes sense, a mistake
they won’t make again in this movie. But wait Alec, isn’t
really a good guy, he’s a bad guy. It’s Goldeneye
all over again! He’s going to steal the Declaration of
Independence … and the only way Nick can stop it is to
steal it first.
I’m
not even going to go into how craptastic the whole breaking
and entering
sequence is. But in a nut shell, Nick and
sidekick break in, battle the baddies, get the Declaration, have
the hot love interest/official declaration historian tag along
as they drive to Daddies to try and make the invisible map visible
again with the Baddies and Feds hot on their trail.
They make
the map visible again and it’s not a map, it’s
a riddle and a code. The riddle tells them that the code indicates
specific letters located in specific lines, on specific pages,
in letters to the editor of a newspaper that Ben Franklin wrote
when he was thirteen.
This
clue killed the movie for me. Nail in coffin. Dead. For four
reasons.
First,
the founding fathers had the foresight to
know that the Declaration of Independence was the most important
document of their time and would be saved forever. Coming in
a close second most important was . . . letters to the editor
by a thirteen year old Ben Franklin? Not the Constitution, not
the Bill of Rights, not Common Sense, not the Articles of Friggin'
Confederation. Letters to the freakin’ editor by a thirteen
year old Ben Friggin’ Franklin.
Second,
by a strange coincidence, the original letters were at one
time held by
a private collector, who had no idea they
were tied to the National Treasure, even though he wasted his
life looking for the treasure. Yes, you guessed it; dear old
dad was the proud owner of these letters. Of course, he gave
them to some museum in Philadelphia, so Nick can’t look
at them. So our hero, his side kick and girl do the next logical
thing, they leave Washington D.C. for Philly, to look at the
letters first hand.
Soon after
the Feds show up at dad’s house and figure
out what’s going on, and look up what the letters say on
the internet. Yes, Nick Cage when to Philly, the Feds used Google.
Nick is a dumbass.
Fourth and
finally, they figure out the code, and it tells them to look
at where
the shadow of the steeple of Freedom Hall points
at exactly 2:30 for the next clue. Sadly Nick checks his watch
and its 2:45. They’ll have to wait till tomorrow. Then
sidekick remembers that in 1776, there was no daylight savings
time, so they still have 45 minutes to get there. So they’re
compensating for daylight savings time, but not the tilt of the
earth that comes with the changing of seasons. I will admit that,
in the movie, being pointed to a general area would have worked,
but then why mention/compensate for daylight savings time at
all? Not to mention their adjustment for daylight savings time
completely wouldn’t have worked anyway, because in 1776
there was no standardized time and time was at best a localized
guesstimate.
I’m done with this review. I simply can’t go on.
That’s a mere half of the movie. The plot from this point
on out is convoluted I could barely even follow it, let alone
explain it to someone. I simply can’t stomach that they
want us to believe that Ben Franklin drew an invisible map on
the back on the Declaration of Independence, moved and hid a
Kajillion dollar treasure (and clues to find it) all over colonial
America, by horse, and in his spare time helped found the country,
invented bifocals, discovered electricity, wrote an Almanac,
was ambassador to France and all the other crap he did. Ben Franklin
was too freakin’ smart to come up with such lame ass clues,
period. The whole movie is “Ernest saves the DiVinci Code” but
not quite that smart.
The movie
is crapadelic. Its plot holes are bigger than the ones in Titanic
(the movie
plot and the actual ship). There is
no believability that this could actually happen. It shouldn’t
come as a surprise to you that the other writing credits the
writer of this movie has, includes Cuba Gooding/Talking Dog flick, “Snow
Dogs.”
With that
said, I can offer only one suggestion to improve the movie.
At the
end of the movie, when they are in the cavern with
the gold statues, the gold coins, and other various gold treasure,
one of them should reach out touch a statue and exclaim, “This
isn’t real gold … it’s just gold foil – and
inside is rich dark milk chocolate. It’s even better than
I imagined!”
Yes, I realize that makes no sense, but neither does the rest
of the movie.
