The Da Vinci Code in a minor key...more humor, more fun...

Rating: 6/10 (13 January 2007)

If your head is still spinning from all the murky codes being deciphered in THE DA VINCI CODE, you can sit back and relax with all the clues NICHOLAS CAGE has to unravel in order to go on his treasure hunt in NATIONAL TREASURE. He has lots of help from his dad (JON VOIGT), a very savvy female assistant (DIANE KRUGER), his mentor (CHRISTOPHER PLUMMER), and his goofy but handsome side-kick (JUSTIN BARTHA). The heist scenes involving a stolen Declaration of Indpendence are a highlight of the film, all filmed on actual locales in and around Washington, D.C. and Philadelphia, handsomely photographed.
Cage gets some stiff resistance from HARVEY KEITEL as a no-nonsense FBI man, and some villainous competition from greedy SEAN BEAN and his henchmen, who want the treasure for monetary purposes only and will stop at nothing, even murder, to lay their greedy hands on it.
It's all Saturday matinée stuff, the plot strictly a mixture of Indiana Jones and other cliffhanger stories where the hero has to pursue his quest while all sorts of obstacles are thrust in his way--and then the final, climactic shoot-out and wild chase before he can walk off with the girl at the end of the movie.
All the standard clichés are firmly in place, but it's still a lot of fun to watch NICHOLAS CAGE interact with a fun loving cast. SEAN BEAN lends some British dignity to his role as the charming villain, not quite as dark a villain as is usual in these sort of capers.
There's a light touch throughout all the heist sequences and chases and explorations of the underground caverns holding the treasure, as well as some well staged moments of suspense with collapsing stairways and termite-ridden wooden structures making the search perilous. JUSTIN BARTHA contributes a lot of the lighter jibes as a computer wiz who is clearly having a good time and knows the whole thing is a lark as he works on his computer graphics.
Nothing too original here, but it's purely an escapist adventure yarn.