director
Jon Turteltaub
screenwriters
Jim Kouf
Cormac Wibberley
Marianne Wibberley
story by
Jim Kouf
Oren Aviv
Charles Segars
producers
Jerry Bruckheimer
Jon Turteltaub
cinematographer
Caleb Deschanel
music
Trevor Rabin
editor
William Goldenberg
cast
Nicolas Cage (Ben Gates)
Diane Kruger (Abigail Chase)
Justin Bartha (Riley Poole)
Sean Bean (Ian Howe)
Jon Voight (Patrick Gates)
Harvey Keitel (Sadusky)
Christopher Plummer (John Adams Gates)
mpaa rating: PG
running
time: 122m
u.s.
release: 11/19/04
video
availability: TBA
official website
other jon
turteltaub films
reviewed on this website:
- instinct
|
Nicolas Cage makes being a
geek look cool. When he plays a brainiac, as he does in the retro,
whistle-clean adventure National Treasure, he gets us
caught up in the almost sensual pleasures of knowledge.
Midway through the movie, Cage's character, Benjamin Franklin
Gates, stands holding the Declaration of Independence -- the
movie's MacGuffin, which has an invisible map on its back --
in Independence Hall; close to tears of awe, he says, "This
is the first time this has been in this room since it was signed."
Moments like that, I think, are why Cage took the role; passion
is his main currency, and Ben Gates is an impassioned, albeit
discredited, student of history, as driven towards preservation
as his other Ben (in Leaving
Las Vegas) was bent on self-destruction.
Restlessly directed by Jon
Turteltaub, who showed no particular flair for adventure filmmaking
in his wet Phenomenon and Instinct,
the movie goes like a rocket, from one ornate clue to the next;
National Treasure is more a detective story than a two-fisted
adventure like the Indiana Jones movies. The vast treasure
promised by a family document has haunted Ben's life, much to
the dismay of his hard-headed dad (Jon Voight), who thinks the
treasure's a myth. Regardless, Ben has managed to convince some
people, including his computer-nerd helper Riley (a scene-stealing
Justin Bartha) and a shady character, Ian Howe, who funds Ben's
missions; Ian is played by Sean Bean, who specializes in duplicity,
so we know he's bad news the second we lay eyes on him. Ben isn't
so fortunate, not having seen GoldenEye
or Ronin.
The movie becomes a merrily
absurd hunt in which Ben tries to keep the Declaration of Independence
safe from Ian's band of thieves; to do this, Ben has to steal
it himself. Before that, though, he slouches from office to office
-- FBI, Homeland Security -- trying to tell everyone that the
historical document is going to be stolen; no one believes him,
not even Diane Kruger as a curator at the National Archives,
who gets drawn into the adventure against her will during the
Declaration's theft-for-its-own-good. Those who hoot at the implausibilities
in National Treasure are barking up the wrong tree, and
may be forgetting how flatly unbelievable some of the situations
in the Indy films were. Nobody wanted to spoil the fun
then, so why should we now?
I called the movie "whistle-clean,"
and it's decidedly family-friendly; the backstory on National
Treasure is that it was going to be distributed by Disney's
Touchstone wing, which handles PG-13 and R-rated films, until
it was submitted to the ratings board and came back with a rare
PG. That explains why the film is going out under the time-honored
Walt Disney banner, and in truth, it's about as wholesome as
any of the studio's live-action flicks decades ago; I'm pretty
sure there isn't even any swearing in the movie, except maybe
in German. Nor is there much gunplay, at least none that pierces
anything but walls, and there's a refreshing lack of CGI gimmickry,
too. I mention all this because I write about a lot of films
that aren't suitable for all ages, and when one comes
along that's not only safe for Junior and Grandma but also pretty
entertaining, I like to point it out, if only to refute the complaint
that they don't make 'em like that anymore.
Of course, with such inoffensiveness
comes a certain lack of edge. The plot of National Treasure
could fit snugly inside a Hardy Boys book, and the scenes of
clue-hunting (including a fairly nifty pair of specs that enable
the wearer to have a Well of Souls-type revelation) should delight
boys; I don't know how well girls will take to the adventure,
since Diane Kruger is mostly reduced to running around or dangling
from things (Lara Croft she ain't, nor even Marion Ravenwood).
National Treasure, for me, is a fun and smooth
throwback, but for boys of a certain age it may gather the nostalgic
heft of the Indiana Jones films when those boys grow up.
It might even inspire them to crack a book or two, and look up
the Founding Fathers, and then the Freemasons, and from there,
who knows.
|
