Implausibly silly but lots of fun

Rating: 7/10 (21 October 2004)

As Jerry Bruckheimer films go, this is not going to have the wide mass appeal of 'Pirates of the Caribbean', but it's not offensive like 'Armageddon' or 'Pearl Harbor', and quite entertaining.
Nicholas Cage comes off as quite sympathetic as Benjamin Franklin Gates, the seventh in a line of archivists, treasure hunters and history buffs stretching back to a confidant of President Andrew Jackson. As a child, Ben was imbued by his grandfather (Christopher Plummer) with not only a love of American history, but a love of stories of knight quests, secreted treasures, maps, and clues hidden deep within the grooves of American History trivia.
Ben's father (Jon Voight) does not approve of his father encouraging such nonsense in his son, and his dialogue strangely reads like a non-Bruckheimer fan in the audience voicing his skepticism of the absurd plot to follow, but Ben nonetheless comes to believe his grandpa's story about how the treasure discovered by the Knights Templar within the Great Pyramid in Giza, Egypt during the Crusades was hidden in America to keep it out of the hands of Britain.
30 years later, Ben and his partner Ian Howe ('The Lord of the Rings's Sean Bean) and comedic foil Riley (Justin Bartha) come to conclude that there may be an invisible map written on the back of the Declaration of Independence leading to the treasure, and when Ben refuses to go along with Ian's plan to steal it, and the authorities refuse to listen to him, Ben is forced to foil Ian's crime, and ends up with the stolen document himself, with Abigail Chase (Diane Kruger from 'Troy'), the beautiful archivist in charge of the National Archives (because naturally, archivists working at the National Archives tend to be such lookers) dragged into the chase against her will. With FBI agent Harvey Keitel on their trail, Ben and his partner Riley (Justin Bartha), along with Abigail, race to find the treasure before Ian.
What follows is a series of chase scenes as the treasure hunters find and search for clues leading them from one historic place to another across three different states, clues that are steeped in the minutiae of American history lore (I have no idea of any of these points is based in historical fact, but in a movie like this, it hardly matters), with Jon Voight again providing the sole voice of reason as he questions whether these clues are just an endless series of arrows pointing to other clues rather than to any real destination.
The action isn't too implausible, the characters are likable, and the movie is just plain fun. The planning and machinations that the film supposes on the part of the Founding Fathers seems wildly implausible, but it doesn't matter. This is a Jerry Bruckheimer film, and one of the better ones. It's take on history may be fluff, but at least it endeavors an interest in it as a prerequisite for the plot, and a medium through which the audience may think to themselves, 'Ooh, I didn't know that about Benjamin Franklin.' If you're an expert in history bothered by the mistakes or flaws about Liberty Bell, or the Masons, or the hidden secrets on our currency, or who just plain doesn't buy the technological sophistication required for some of the artifacts uncovered by the characters, then perhaps you're watching it for the wrong reasons. If you don't know one way or the other, then it doesn't really matter. This is a popcorn film, and if you know anything about Jerry Bruckheimer, you should know going in what you're getting.
Bruckheimer was in attendance last night, and gave the brief speech before the movie began (which not usually the case outside of premieres-this was just a press screening), and right before leaving when the closing credits started, I complimented him, saying it was very entertaining.
If you like to sit back and have fun, I recommend it.