A decent movie.......when you don't have to pay $11 to see it.

Rating: 4/10 (5 January 2008)

I didn't see the first one, but I have a great idea of went down. The profits made from the first movie went towards keeping Harvey Keitel in the movie, getting Helen Mirren to appear, and whatever was left over was used to pay for the villain, and they only had enough to afford Ed Harris. As part of her deal, Helen Mirren probably managed to get the producers the Buckingham Palace set from "The Queen" while the actor who played the President probably brought with him the Oval Office set from "13 Days", in which he also played a President, though not a fictional one (he was Kennedy in 13 days). The characterization is well done and Cage, Voight, and the rest do great jobs portraying their nuanced characters, and the plot is a lengthy and intricate ordeal but it's simply a bit too ridiculous. The movie isn't terrible, but is often contrived, clichéd, and painful to watch. The light-hearted attempts at humour were terrifyingly weak. In one scene Nicholas Cage and his sidekick are trying to find a hidden code on the Paris Statue of Liberty when suddenly two Parisian Gendarmarie(police) accost them. Cage then proceeds to distract them by putting on a cliché French accent and talking about how he knows who Montesquieu was. Suddenly, the police are so overtaken by Cage's knowledge of the French philosopher's existence that they decide to let him carry on and even help translate the clue they eventually discover. I learned about Montesquieu in 8th grade history, so based on the logic of this movie I know more than enough about philosophers (especially after taking that stupid Baruch Intro to Philosophy class) to get out of DWI or even murder in any country in Europe. The movie is good if you have nothing, and quite literally nothing, to do. If you enjoy watching Ed Harris shift in and out of his cliché Southern accent and utter stilted lines like "please excuse me for the lateness of the hour," (is that supposed to be a gentlemanly, Southern way of apologizing for showing up after 11:30?) then by all means go for it. Otherwise wait for a rainy day when it comes on cable.