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National Treasure- 11/19/04 - PG - 131m
Nicolas Cage - Ben Gates
Diane Kruger - Abigail Chase
Justin Bartha - Riley Poole
Director: Jon Turteltaub
Screenplay by: Cormac and Marianne Wibberley
Studio: Disney
Official
Website
JEF
I must first confess that I think the only reason I liked this movie was because of the subject matter. I’m a big fan of secret societies, conspiracy theories, etc. I was caught up in the storyline and was able to overlook some of the hokey lines, and plot inconsistencies.
Storyline: Benjamin Franklin Gates (Nicolas Cage) comes from a family of treasure guardians/hunters. In a round about way, his great, great, great, great, grandfather was given a clue about a hidden treasure. The clue came from a member of a secret society (the freemasons) and because they are a secret society, the treasure is very well hidden, with a ton of obscure clues supposedly leading to the treasure.
Ben thinks he’s so close to finding this treasure but keeps running into problems, more clues, etc, and can’t quite seem to get to that last stage.
I could continue to explain the storyline, but the more I talk about it the more I’d be giving away. Basically it’s an action adventure movie that has close ties to Raiders of the Lost Ark. (Although 'Raiders' was a much better film.)
The action was almost non-stop from the first moments of the film. (For better or worse I’m not sure.)
As I mentioned above, I’m a big fan of the storyline for this movie. I’ve been waiting months for this movie to come out when I first heard about it. I think they could have maybe explained things a little more, but I was surprised how much they did go into detail. A lot of which is based on “truth”. I put “truth” in quotes because there are a lot of conspiracy theories all wrapped around this topic. There supposedly is a real treasure that was taken/lost/stolen from King Solomon’s tomb, with rumors of it’s existence being brought up around several secret societies. Groups such as; the Knights Templar, The Freemasons, The Illuminati, The Rosicrucians, just to name a few. I’ve read several books about these groups (which always strikes me as funny, because for being a “secret” society, there are a ton of books about them). So I was watching this movie looking for all the little nods, and clues, and references scattered throughout the movie.
While I was caught up in the story, small moments occurred within the movie, that made me say to myself, ‘hmm, did he just say a really corny line?’ or ‘that doesn’t really make any sense’, etc… but then I was distracted by the storyline again, or the action sequence, or the special effects.
So, even though I’m giving this a green light, I suppose I should warn you that it may not be a good movie. Do you like Nicolas Cage? Did you know that most of our founding fathers were members of a secret society? Did you know that many of our current presidents are also members of a secret society? Do you know what the eye in the pyramid symbol on the back of our dollar represents? Do you know who the Templars are? Do you know what AMORC stands for? If the answer is yes to any of these, you MAY also enjoy this movie.
One final note, this may be the first of these movies to come out soon. With the book “The DaVinci Code” being on the best-seller list (often in the #1 position) for something like 86 weeks! And it too is being made into a movie now as we speak, I suspect we’ll be seeing more of these “secret society” style movies trying to cash in on the hype created by the DaVinci Code book.
Jef
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PS> Just because I put up all these various links does not mean I believe in any of it. It's just for fun... like National Treasure... 23
