A decent , entertaining "discovery" caper, kept my interest all the way through.

Rating: Null/10 (17 December 2008)

I enjoyed this movie better than the first one, I thought the story was better in every way. Nicolas Cage is back as Ben Gates. As the title suggests, there is a "book of secrets", particularly a book that has never been verified to exist, but supposedly is passed down from president to president and containing certain "secrets." Jon Voight is back as his father, Patrick Gates. The movie is loaded with other stars, including Diane Kruger, Helen Mirren as his mother, Ed Harris, Harvey Keitel, and Bruce Greenwood as The President.
Ed Harris plays a particularly unsavory character who wants to get to the supposed treasure before Ben does. The treasure is said to be a hidden city of gold belonging to the Native Americans. Ben and his dad pick up on clues, which take them to a desk in Buckingham Palace, and then to a companion desk in the White House. Part of the fun in the movie is seeing how Ben gains access to these highly secure places.
Part of his mission cannot be accomplished without his "kidnapping" the President, and it is clever the way they have Ben accomplish that. If the President is to admit that there is a book of secrets, he would have to do that with everyone else, including Secret Service personnel, absent.
This is the movie which has the scene made famous in trailers, where Ben, behind the Mount Rushmore sculptures, places his hand into a hole in the rock and starts yelling, but then laughs as he lets on it was a joke on the others.
SPOILERS: They eventually find the book of secrets in a safe hiding place in the library of congress, only accessible with a code the president gave Ben. All this leads them to Mt Rushmore, and behind the sculptures they find a passage among the rocks that lets them into the city of gold. But being old it starts to crumble and they almost all get killed, but only Harris's character dies, but the underground city is destroyed. However Ben manages to clear the name of his ancestor who had been accused of masterminding the assassination of Lincoln.