Pink-knuckle adventure

Rating: 4/10 (22 January 2011)

At one point in the movie, near the end, Ed Harris' character Mitch says to his rival, our hero Nicolas Cage's Ben Gates "No more puzzles" after which I breathed a sigh of relief - how many more elaborate mysteries linked to historical buildings or monuments could the writers concoct.
This is big-time, big-budget Hollywood holiday adventure aimed at your average thirteen year old and what it hopes and indeed probably believes is the thirteen year old in all of us. Thus we get high-tech thrills you can easily imagine playing on your PC, with very little sex and violence to upset the censor.
More seasoned viewers will probably see it for what it is - an amalgam of proved and tested blockbusters from recent years - taking in Indiana Jones type exoticism, adding in a touch of The Da Vinci Code's Alex 's ability to decipher the most arcane clues plus the "Pirates of The Caribbean" trick of adapting a Disneyland theme park to the big screen. Plus of course there's a nerdy computer geek who can hack into the London Police computer system quicker than you can say "Evenin' All", but it's okay, computer anoraks everywhere, even he gets a Ferrari (outrageous piece of product placement, right there) and a girl by the end.
The acting is perfunctory - ridiculous to see Helen Mirren in particular wasted on fluff like this and to be honest, nobody ever really seems to be in any danger at all. That said, there are some nice location shots at Buckingham Palace and Mount Rushmore and the recreation of the City of Gold is certainly impressive.
I don't want to be too hard on this film, it didn't displease me, but it wasn't smart enough to insert telling humour to leaven the journey and at no point did I feel my hands gripping the arms of my chair as a good adventure really should.