National Treasure

National Treasures is the surprise of the winter season. Although I thought the initial previews were over the top and I was not inclined to see the movie it turned out to be a well balanced adventure that will make good box office in a season that is devoid of big budget action films. National Treasure treads a fine line, on one hand it desires to be the usual big budget action film with car chases and gun fights. On the other hand, National Treasure is about a group of historians with a healthy respect for the fragile documents in their care whose respect leads them to handle evidence with kid gloves. So how do you blow things up while protecting them? Modern science. In this day and age you shoot at things but protect them in tubes or behind bullet proof glass. This gives the film the feeling of one of the greatest treasure hunter series of all times, Indiana Jones. Though National Treasure does not have the sense of humor that Indiana Jones possesses and Nicholas Cage is no Harrison Ford the film still works on many of the same levels.

Cage plays Ben Gates, keeper of family lore that the founding fathers, Masons to a man, hid an immeasurable treasure somewhere in the thirteen colonies. As the story would have it the founding fathers died off one by one until the last remaining man realized that if he didn’t tell someone then no one would ever find the treasure. I guess even the best laid plans have their peccadilloes. You would think that men capable of designing a form of government rife with checks and balances to authority and power would have seen this little flaw in their treasure protection plan, but there is a certain amount of acceptance that has to go along with any action film. Thus the last remaining founding father imparts a bit or arcane information to his driver, a Gates ancestor, and the Gates family obsession is born.

Ben Gates is a well educated man but he has fallen out both with educated circles and with his own father because of his obsession with finding the treasure of the founding fathers. After a voyage to the frozen north reveals the next clue in the treasure hunt Ben and his financial backer Ian, Sean Bean, move onto the next phase which involves a clue on the back of the Declaration of Independence. Of course anyone who has seen Sean Bean in any movie knows that he turns out to be the bad guy. Suave and sure he can play, but Bean always seems to be cast as the baddie. I don’t know if this is an issue with his casting agent or not, but Sean Bean is a good enough actor that he should be occasionally given a role where he doesn’t have to do something evil. The treasure hunt leads to a game of cat and mouse between Ben and Ian as they race through Washington, New York, and Philadelphia in search of the next step in the search for the treasure.

Along the way Ben picks up two sidekicks, the amusing sidekick, Riley, played by Justin Bartha, and the adorable Diane Kruger as the museum curator Abigail Chase. As expected the growing mania bring the three closer together and romance ensues but in this case the film keeps the romantic element to a bare respectable minimum. Each of the three is just as fixated on the mythical treasure as Ben both for its history as well as the clever way that the founding fathers were able to hide scraps of information leading to one final destination.

Along the way to recovering the treasure Ben must not only delve the secrets of the founding fathers, he must also come to terms with his own estranged father. Jon Voight plays Ben’s father Patrick, the only one in a long line of Gates who has rejected his family’s obsession with the mysterious treasure in favor of a more pedestrian, and stable, life. Voight plays him to perfection as a man who is unable to talk to his son in the realm of reality and who feels weighed down by the nonsense handed to him by his family. Of course there is a treasure, and when Ben comes to him for help he must put aside the prejudices of a lifetime to help seek the treasure.

This film is pure adventure with mounds of gold, gun toting bad guys, and even torches. Of course this film, like most other good stories, wraps itself in truth and history to make it even more compelling. The scenes in Washington show the regular visitors to the shrine as well as those nefarious men plotting to steal the Declaration of Independence. The scenes in Philadelphia show an Independence Hall that is amidst a vibrant city where the past and present dwell together. The film is entertaining and well paced throughout and the cinematographer has brought out the best in the places in which the story is set. This film is highly watchable and will probably end up in many film collections, including mine, along side The Indiana Jones movies and The Goonies.