As ridiculous nonsense goes, “National Treasure” is a much more entertaining movie than you might expect. Hopeless in the plausibility department, it nevertheless has a cool subject and swift momentum.
The story appears to be borrowed from “The Da Vinci Code” and other historical mysteries, but with an all-American slant.
Nicolas Cage plays a treasure hunter who has devoted much of his life to solving a great puzzle. One of his ancestors was a signer of the Declaration of Independence, and left behind a cryptic note as a clue to a vast hidden treasure.
This treasure has something to do with Freemasons and the Knights Templar and all that other secret-society stuff that’s so much fun to think about.
During a fittingly preposterous sequence in the Arctic, where Cage and a collaborator (Sean Bean) find another clue, the two men part ways. Now they are competing for the prize: to get their hands on the Declaration of Independence and read the invisible secret message written on the back.
You still on board? Cage and his wise-cracking assistant (Justin Bartha) try to go through official channels, but the attractive gatekeeper (Diane Kruger from “Troy”) of the Declaration is, for some strange reason, skeptical of their story. So, there’s nothing to do but steal the Declaration of Independence.
From there, “National Treasure” happily hops from invisible ink to special X-ray glasses invented by Benjamin Franklin to vast underground chambers designed by our Founding Fathers. (Not only did those guys launch a great experiment in democracy, they were good with puzzles.)
One of the many problems with the film is Cage’s character. You can imagine that at some point he might have been weirder; if you’ve got Nicolas Cage, after all, why not let him do his thing? Instead, the script is uneven, sometimes letting Cage be quirky, sometimes a straight hero, and at one point abruptly switching to a kind of misogynist eccentric.
In typical fashion for a Jerry Bruckheimer production, small roles are filled by big names, including Jon Voight and Christopher Plummer as Cage’s father and grandfather, respectively. Harvey Keitel manages to bring a bit of grit to the federal agent hunting Cage.
Director Jon Turteltaub takes the proper approach with this kind of idiocy, which is to keep everything hurtling along and break up the action with jokes. As long as you can turn off your brain, it works.
There’s even a lone grace note: History buffs Cage and Kruger find themselves holding the Declaration in the same Philadelphia room in which it was signed in 1776.
We hold these truths to be self-evident: This is a dumb movie, and I am slightly ashamed, but not too much, of having enjoyed it.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
