National Treasure: Book of Bad Plotting

Rating: 3/10 (21 September 2009)

National Treasure: Book of Secrets, is a decent action film that suffers from the inevitable decease that it has to follow a top notch action adventure movie NT 1.
The writers of this one must have had some difficulties setting up the plot, because more than once are there scenes taken almost directly from the first one, though set in Paris or London this time around. Especially the whole plot revolving the villain is almost copy-pasted from the original, however, the writers just never get around to explaining Wilkinson(the villain)properly, and it results in his switching around from bad guy to good guy three or four times during the last 45 min. An example of this is that he apologizes for smearing Ben Gates' great-great grand dad and five minutes later he holds a blade to Diane Kruger throat if he isn't allowed to leave the horrible booby traps first.
Also, Ben Gates, who in the first one really showed his skill as a treasure hunter using only his brain, seems to get a lot of help from the writers to suddenly realise the nature of his quest, without really having to put an effort into it.
The movie seems to have been made in order to make a quick buck, as the first was a huge success, the execs (Bruckheimer) and director Jon Turteltaub do not seem to have made much effort in telling a cohesive story, but seem more engaged in selling tickets.