Cibola

Rating: 5/10 (1 January 2011)

Conspiracy theorists will love National Treasure: The Book Of Secrets because it will give one plausible reason to affirm all the paranoid things one already believes in and add a few more. Imagine the fabled Cibola, City of Gold, which several conquistadors spent lots of time and money searching for, being positively real and the clues being in Buckingham Palace and the White House? Does it get more conspiratorial than that?
Nicholas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Jon Voight, and Harvey Keitel all repeat their roles from the first National Treasure. Because part of the riddle is in some Indian language symbols, the intrepid treasure hunters have to call in Voight's estranged wife and Cage's mother Helen Mirren. That raises all kinds of issues not related to treasure hunting.
Ed Harris is the villain here, he starts the ball rolling by claiming to have an authentic missing page of John Wilkes Booth's diary which implicates Voight and Cage's ancestor in the Lincoln assassination. Of course Harris has an ulterior motive in doing that, to get the treasure hunters working because their historical knowledge is greater than his. In the end however he proves not to be as big a villain as the group from the first National Treasure and that's quite a let down.
As for Cibola, let's just say that the government has put quite the marker on the site.
If you're a history lover or a conspiracy theorist this film will grab your attention. But it's not up to the standard of the first one.