Really not half bad! A very entertaining action, adventure, romance

Rating: 7/10 (12 September 2005)

My expectations were a little bit low for this. I was pleasantly surprised. At first blush, it seemed like the Studio Bigwigs were trying to piggy back on the success of DaVinci Code. That made me skeptical. Although I still believe that was the intent, they actually pulled it off! While the ancient Secret Society, buried treasure, and Intellectual treasure hunt theme was preserved, it was executed with surprising freshness and watch-ability. Nick Cage has been hit an miss in many of his movies, but I think he did a very good job in this one, pulling off the Partly Nerdish, yet secretly Swashbuckling adventurer to a tee. I would watch this one again. I would even look forward to some sort of equally well done sequel, but based on the outcome of this one, don't really see how they could script that without making it seem really forced.