What to do if you can’t get the rights to turn Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code into a movie? If you’re Walt Disney Pictures, you strip it of religious concepts and make a Da Vinci Code knockoff in National Treasure, which doesn’t work hard enough with a wide-open premise.
Teaming with Con Air producer Jerry Bruckheimer for the fourth time, Nicolas Cage stars as Benjamin Gates, a third-generation treasure hunter, hopping the globe in search of a rumored bounty o’ historical booty buried by the nation’s founding fathers that his ancestors failed to find. When we meet him, he’s unearthing a pirate ship in the Arctic Circle. The boat doesn’t contain the goods, but merely another clue — one that, as he deciphers, suggests the map to said loot is printed in invisible ink on the back of the Declaration of Independence.
Upon this discovery, Gates is double-crossed by his partner, Howe (GoldenEye villain Sean Bean), who leaves him and wisecracking sidekick (Justin Bartha, The Hangover) for dead. Knowing that Howe will steal the priceless document and destroy it, Gates has no choice but to steal it in order to preserve it. In the film’s best set piece, he does, but unwittingly pulls National Archives hottie Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger, Inglourious Basterds) into the dangerous cat-and-mouse pursuit that results.
The hunt takes Gates and company clue by clue to all sorts of touristy stops in Washington, D.C. Somehow, despite having the FBI after him for the theft of the Declaration, he’s able to hang out at all these unguarded public places with ease. It’s a reminder of the pre-9/11 glory days when people could shoot guns at each other on the city streets and no one would bat an eye.
Although overlong, National Treasure somehow feels underwritten, partly because it tries to be too many things — heist, adventure, chase, action — doing better in some areas than others, yet not outright succeeding in any. It’s by no means bad; it just is. You may be entertained without being fully engaged. Director Jon Turteltaub (3 Ninjas) doesn’t do the enough with the clues and the codes, wasting too much of 131 minutes on repetitive getaways and close calls. This one squeaks by much the same.
In the end, Abigail presents Gates with a map to her vagina. —Rod Lott
Saw this, and its sequel, described somewhere as “Indiana Jones lite.” I’ll pass.
As for the map to Abigail’s vagina… I bet it’s a well-traveled path.