Nicolas Cage is the history-buff hero.
Photo: Robert Zuckerman
(PG) General release
* * 1/2
There's something of The Da Vinci Code about National Treasure, with its plot that revolves around secrets of the Masons and Knights Templar, and codes and clues that can only be deciphered by an obsessive scholar - plus a girl, a deadly adversary, and trips to sites of cultural significance. There's also a touch of the Indiana Jones franchise about this Saturday-matinee action-adventure search for legendary treasure among tombs and monuments.
But there are a couple of significant distinctions. This is a firmly American enterprise. National is the key word. No uncomfortable excursions into foreign climes. The movie's settings (apart from a preliminary sally into the Arctic Circle) are major American cities. The origins of the mysterious loot might go back thousands of years, but the history in this film concerns the founding fathers, the Liberty Bell and, above all, the Declaration of Independence - a sacred document which, we understand, has a secondary function as a treasure map.
Nicolas Cage plays a character, Benjamin Franklin Gates, who has inherited a belief that this fantastic, if unspecified bounty can be located, and has found a sponsor, Ian Howe (Sean Bean), who has the money to help him realise his quest. Soon, however, he discovers that Howe - treacherous Briton that he is - can't be trusted. Howe plans to steal the Declaration of Independence and use the treasure it will reveal for his own enrichment: to protect the document, Gates realises, he will have to steal it. The film swiftly becomes a caper movie.
Gates has a single sidekick, although he acquires a glamorous co-conspirator (Diane Kruger) along the way.
He must steal the Declaration, decipher its secrets, restore his relationship with his father (Jon Voight), fight off Howe and his minions, and find the treasure. Director Jon Turteltaub keeps things moving competently, Cage makes a reasonable enough history-buff action-hero, in a wide-eyed, cheerfully silly, instantly forgettable neo-Boy's Own Adventure that barely sets foot outside historic Washington and old New York.