"You're treasure hunters, aren't you?"

Rating: 6/10 (8 May 2005)

I have often said there are some movies where you turn the brain off and just sit back and enjoy the movie. And by the slimmest of margins, National Treasure fits into this category. It was close, but National Treasure is full of enough entertainment value to recommend seeing it. Nicholas Cage is Benjamin Franklin Gates, one in a long line of family members who believe that the founding members of the United States, with help from the masons, hid a vast treasure somewhere, and left just enough clues for someone, someday, to find it. The clues take a lot of interpretation (this is where you turn your brain "off") and neatly take our heroes to the next clue, and so on and so on. Gates is helped by his trusty sidekick Riley (Justin Bartha), who's job is to assist Gates in formulating the interpretation of the clues and to supply the needed joke at the perfect time. He does his job well. Gates also get the reluctant help from Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger) who works at the National Archives and knows everything there we need to know to keep the plot moving forward. There is competition from a rival group of explorers looking for the treasure, led by Ian Howe (Sean Bean) who keeps the energy of the moving going. The one person who actually keeps his feet on the ground throughout the movie is Gates' father, played by Jon Voight, who is the one person in the Gates family who does not think the treasure exists. For Voight, this is a rare character who is not a nut-job, and he plays it very well. National Treasure is entertaining, there are some good chase sequences and the movie looks good too. And for once, not a single scene was filmed in Vancouver or Toronto. When we see Philadelphia, we see Philadelphia. Likewise with Washington and New York. If for nothing else, you will learn one or two things about American History (NOT about the pyramid on the back of the one dollar bill however, that was made up) and you will be entertained, and there is nothing in this movie any family to object to. The PG rating is more than earned with National Treasure. This movie is clean, mindless entertainment that will keep people interested in what comes next.