Do you like the Indiana Jones trilogy of movies? All three of them? Hope so, because with National Treasure you get a movie that steals from all three of those films. Yes, Bruckheimer and crew essentially give us a recap of the entire Jones series, but with the advantage of not having to sit through six hours of movie viewing...and without all of those great story lines...and all of that messy good acting stuff. It's like having the Cliff Notes for Indiana Jones, and that's a beautiful thing.

With Indiana Jones you have a son carrying on his father's legacy of being obsessed with religious artifacts. National Treasure ups the ante by having just such an obsession pass down through six generations. A young Ben Gates sneaks up into his grandfather's attic to sneak a peak at his treasure scrapbook. Caught in the act, the kindly grandfather takes him through the known history of a vast hidden treasure which his family has been trying to find since the American Revolution. Knight's Templar, Masons, secret societies, vast treasures...this story has been around in film version since The Maltese Falcon, but I'm sure Bruckheimer can tell it in a fascinating
new way.

Spring ahead twenty years or so, and we find Ben, played by Nicholas Cage, on an expedition to the Arctic with his partner and financier of the expedition, Ian Howe, played by Sean Bean. Ah, hah, hah! Sean Bean?! Are you kidding me?! Has anything good ever happened in a movie in which Sean Bean has appeared? Even hobbits don't trust this guy. I'm sorry, perhaps I'm just a bit jaded and Sean really is capable of being a nice guy. Maybe if we give him one more chance, things will turn out all right in this story.

The expedition is in search of a ship named Charlotte buried underneath the arctic ice. Cage digs a few inches and finds it on his first try. Whoo hoo! What luck! How did he know it was there? Oh, don't waste your time with such trivialities, this film isn't concerned with the how or the why. The crew enters the hull of the ship and they find a whole bunch of gunpowder which they then exert a great deal of effort spreading around by breaking open every single cask. That kind of thing could be dangerous! Hope no one gets careless with a match or something.

While the rest of the crew is fumbling about, Ben immediately goes to the cask which contains the next clue on their Colonial scavenger hunt. This is the first of many times in the movie that the writers go out of their way to show how superior Ben's intellect is to that of his companions. Ben finds an old pipe which he intuitively knows contains a hidden message. If only there were something to smear onto it to print the message. Wait, I know, stab your thumb and smear it all over the priceless pipe! Good thinking there, Ben! I always prefer the thumb myself when in need of a little blood.

Ben deciphers the clues which all point to a secret message on the back of The Declaration of Independence. Well game over, there's no way anyone could get to that famously guarded document. Ian doesn't agree. He's got all the wealth and resources in the world. Now if someone says they are going to try to steal The Declaration of Independence, it means they are crazy. Game over. It's times like these that you don't tell said crazy person that you won't let them get away with their evil plan. It's like having sex in a horror movie, it's not going to go well for you. One thing leads to another and all of that messy gunpowder gets set on fire and Ben and Riley get blowed up. Don't worry, we're only twenty minutes into the movie, we're not going to blow up our star that easily.

What follows is a race to find the clues to the treasure first. Ben uses his brains while Ian uses his brawn ad nauseam. And then after Ben and his crew find the clues first, they are caught by Ian's crew ad nauseam. Oh there's lots of mystery, a sexless love interest and even a bad Bruckheimer chase scene, and it's all very well done, it's just that it's all been done before. And much better. There's never any real danger and the good guy gets the girl and the treasure in the end. Yawn. And Cage proves once again that he can't carry a movie as the leading man type. This movie is neither fish nor fowl and as a result leaves you with an empty feeling in the pit of your stomach.

Hamlin Grade: 3

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