Truthfully speaking, I've never really liked Nicholas Cage or any of his work (except, probably, the Meg Ryan tear-jerker, City Of Angels) and so, I watched his latest film, National Treasure, with few expectations.
Cage plays "treasure protector" cum historian geek, Benjamin Gates, who has to piece together clues left behind by America's founding fathers, that leads to an ancient treasure. Aided by a tech-whizz sidekick (Justin Bartha) and a beautiful archivist (Diane Kruger, last seen in Troy), he must outwit & out-race unscrupulous villain Ian Howe (Sean Bean) to the treasure, or else, erm.. something terrible will happen?? LOl. Trailers and posters of the movie might make it seem like a Tomb Raider-wannabe but what National Treasure really aspires to be is an Indiana Jones knock-off with a pilfered plot from Dan Brown's bestselling book, The Da Vinci Code. Though I've not read the latter, Cage makes a poor substitute for Harrison Ford and thus, is not particularly interesting to watch. However, he successfully manages to convey a sense of innocent earnestness (must be those puppy eyes of his... ) everytime he finds a clue (which is more of a riddle) and solves it, no matter how baffling (and nonsensical) it might be.
Despite a garbled story which is a healthy concoction of American history tampered with Hollywood glamor, one can never really get bored with National Treasure as we are forced to go along with the characters as they race from one place to another to find their precious "clues". The storyline is also well-punctuated with chase scenes and action sequences although they may seem abit low-key (and relatively lame) for a Jerry Bruckheimer-produced movie. Christopher Plummer, Jon Voight and Harvey Keitel complete the supporting cast but unfortunately, they remain much in the sidelines. Thank heavens then that we have Justin Bartha to provide us with the much-needed humor, and Diane Kruger for the quintessential eye-candy.
While not such a big-budgeted and wham-bang affair, National Treasure is wholesome entertainment for the entire family; the violence & explosions are never too loud or too garish and there are hardly any expletives uttered. As long as you're not expecting too much, this movie would just do fine for an evening out with your group of buddies.
my ratings: 3.2/5 stars~!!!
