HC Reviews

National Treasure

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

Spoilers are between the [ ].

This movie was actually quite fun.

If you're at all familiar with Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code (and liked it), then you'll like this movie.

The idea of conspiracy theories and secret societies comes into play while hunting for a treasure that may or may not exist.

The movie is predictible in parts, sure. You have to suspend your disbelief a few times (and not just about the conspiracy theories) but it doesn't distract too much from the action.
[When they take his father's car and the FBI put out a BOLO for it, they're driving from DC to PA. Surely, at some point, a cop would've seen the car and called it in way before they made it to PA.

When they get the Declaration of Independence to the dad's house, they decode the clues on the back with lemon juice and blow dryers. Don't you think that chemical tests were done on the DofI before? I doubt that the government wouldn't have done tests to help preserve the life of the document. And, all it took was lemon juice? I realize that the Freemasons had limited resources back then, but simple lemon juice? Come on!

At the end, we're supposed to believe that the American goverment would readily agree to divide the treasure to other countries? Please. Also, like the Church where the treasure was stored wouldn't try to lay claim because it was found on their property? Call me cynical, but I can't believe it. This is the USA in 2004.]

The pacing was great. Never once did I feel like "Are we almost to the end yet?" (unlike I did when I was watching the 80,000 previews!).

The acting was good as well. Nicholas Cage managed not to stink up the movie and you empathize with his character. Sean Bean, as always, is great as the not-as-bad-as-you-think guy. [His devolution in the bad guy makes sense. He's fronted Nicholas Cage a lot of money to help fund the wild goose chase. He, looking at the big picture, knows that he won't get to keep the treasure and knows that giving the treasure to the world governments would be a good thing to do. Being the keen business man that he is, he also knows that he will get a percentage of profit from the find and that he'll make back his money. It's only when he seemingly hits a snag that he falls into the bad guy role. And I'm not trying to justify the character just because it's Sean Bean. ]

But what really rocked were the locations and the history lessons (in the form of exposition to move the plot along). I've actually never been to any of the locations in the movie (DC, PA and the locations in NYC) and this movie really makes we want to go see our history. The US, despite being a young nation, has quite a history to it and it would be awesome to see all the places shown in this movie.

Overall, I'd would recommend watching this movie at a matinee. You could even wait until it comes out on video because it's not really a movie you need to see on the big screen. But you should definitely see it.

Posted by xinh at November 21, 2004 06:41 PM