It should come as no surprise that there is a secret cave full of Aztec gold buried behind Mount Rushmore — not if you’ve seen the first “National Treasure” film. All sorts of bizarre historical mumbo-jumbo came out of that one (some of it real).
That fun movie was a hit, so here’s “National Treasure: Book of Secrets,” which reunites the same cast of characters and adds a few new ones. Again the story combines “Da Vinci Code” puzzles and Indiana Jones stunts.
Treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) re-assembles his team (they’ve all managed to miraculously lose the money they acquired at the end of the first movie) in order to clear the name of his great-great-grandfather.
A mystery man (Ed Harris) has suggested that Gates’ relative was actually the ringmaster behind the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. How, you might ask, does this connect up with a buried cache of gold?
The clue comes in a secret book, known only to the presidents of the United States, which also holds the answers to the JFK assassination, Area 51, and the missing minutes from the Nixon tapes. What, you didn’t know about the secret presidents’ book?
Nobody but the U.S. president even knows about the book. This does not discourage our hero.
And hey, the movie’s only half over. Eventually Gates and his crew must travel north-by-northwest to Mount Rushmore, where a finale, much like the falling-rocks-and-booby-traps ending of the first movie, naturally awaits them.
Does this sound just a smidge preposterous? Of course it does. But frankly, the movie had me at “Lincoln assassination.” Get in the right mood, turn yourself over to this high nonsense, and you’ll probably have a pretty good time.
The Gates team re-ups Diane Kruger as a documents expert and Justin Bartha as a computer genius/wisecracker. Naturally Ben’s father is back, in the form of Jon Voight, and this time we meet Ben’s mother, also an academic, played by recent Oscar winner Helen Mirren. This movie probably paid for a lot of summer homes.
The president is played by Bruce Greenwood, a busy actor lately seen in “I’m Not There” and “John from Cincinnati,” who somehow seems to be playing the president even when he’s not playing the president.
Director Jon Turteltaub returns from the first film, but the thing he misses here is that the real fun of these movies is the clues and the puzzles, not the action. A boring car chase and an exhausting climax are more distracting than anything else.
Maybe they’ll get this sorted out for “National Treasure 3,” which will reveal the secrets behind Warren Harding’s White House love nest. Finally, the true facts can be told.
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