Polished Indiana Jones copy, sanitised for the kids

Rating: 5/10 (1 September 2016)

This is a film very much in the spirit of THE DA VINCI CODE – except it came out before the film version of that bestseller, and it's also a lot better, although that isn't saying much. It's a straightforward mystery/detective/crime/adventure film, reminiscent on plenty of movies that have come before (MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE and INDIANA JONES AND THE LAST CRUSADE spring particularly to mind here). It's fair to say that NATIONAL TREASURE doesn't add anything new to the genre, and it doesn't have a lot to say about anything, ever. It's a Walt Disney-produced film, so is geared squarely at children, and it's inoffensive, light, and not too head-scratching.
The cast is something of a mixed bag. There are former luminaries like a slightly embarrassed Jon Voight and a barely-in-it Harvey Keitel hanging around the edges and reminding us of who they are, while total idiots like Justin Bartha are given the limelight. Bartha plays the youthful ally, the teenage 'hook' who's supposed to humanise the story, adding humour and comment all the while. He just comes across as a jerk, and his punchlines are cringe worthy. Still, it's not saying much when an overacting Nicolas Cage is your lead, engaging in supposed romantic scenes with cold fish Diane Kruger. Was this really the face that launched a thousand ships? I don't think so, somehow. The only cast members of note are the Brits. Christopher Plummer delights as a Gandalf-type character in the opening sequence, and Sean Bean handles the villain duties as the absurdly monikered 'Ian' – hmm, the name doesn't exactly fill one with terror, does it? We're used to seeing Bean as a crumpled rogue, but he's dapper here and delivers a straight-on-the-money turn as the avaricious villain. He's the best thing in the film, even if he is the bad guy again.
The story zips along at a fair pace, and I enjoyed the various historical elements that showed up along the way (the tinted glasses were particularly interesting). The stealing-the-Declaration set-piece is a little too close to a certain Tom Cruise film, but the subsequent car chase is all right and the various machinations aren't too laborious to sit through. Things end up in one of those clichéd, CGI'ed places, a massive vault with an endless pit below, with characters jumping around on rickety platforms and the like. It's all pretty predictable and what happens at the end won't surprise anyone. Still, something kept me watching this film, and I suspect that director Jon Turteltaub is the culprit; he adds a level of finesse and polish that the film doesn't strictly deserve.