Not original, but decent way to spent a couple of hours

Rating: 6/10 (18 February 2008)

National Treasure tries its best in two different fields: firstly it tries to be modern Indiana Jones type of an action/adventure film and secondly it tries to cash in with the conspiracy theories about free masons once again popularized by Da Vinci Code. On those both fields the film succeeds better than most combatants.
Ben Gates (Nicholas Cage) is a treasure hunter after, just like his father and grand father and so on, the biggest treasure of all time: the famed booty of the templars. Ian Howe (Sean Bean) is after the same thing, but he's more savage about his mission, so he's the bad treasure hunter. After Ben and Ian learn, that the map to the treasure is behind one certain piece of paper, that lies heavily guarded in one heavily guarded museum, starts the race of a man, who want's to keep that paper in tact and one who's willing to destroy the paper to get the map.
Even tough the movie isn't spoiled with too much originality, a lot is saved by good direction and a great cast, including Harvey Keitel and Jon Voight just to name few. Cage is his usual self, a bit wooden, but out of the treasure hunters Bean, just like he often does, steal all the screen time they share together.
So if you are willing to forgive some astonishing leaps of logic and relatively cheesy plot, I see no reason why this wouldn't pass for a decent way top spend a couple of hours. I certainly was a bit surprised of how well this worked in the end.