 | MOVIE #1,229 • 🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿🍿 • 11.09.23 Starting in 2020, I decided to watch & review the entire Nicolas Cage filmography in alphabetical order. This is 𝔗𝔥𝔢 𝔜𝔢𝔞𝔯 𝔬𝔣 ℭ𝔞𝔤𝔢 – Chapter 51. After a month-long SPOOKY MONTH pause, Benjamin Franklin Gates (Cage) and the whole gang are back! (Plus, new villain Ed Harris!) The film begins in a flashback set in 1865 just after the end of the Civil War. On the night that Abraham Lincoln is assassinated, John Wilkes Boothe and some other guy try to get Cage’s great-great-grandfather (I think it’s only two “greats”) to decipher a code and end up shooting him before he finishes. Cut to present day Cage giving a lecture on this topic where he basically says that without him they would have lost the Civil War for real. But then Ed Harris stands up in the back of the auditorium and makes a damning claim… |
We then cut to Riley, Cage’s lovable sidekick, and see he has written a book about the adventures of the first movie. He is signing copies of it at the Borders bookstore where I used to work (JK – I did work at the defunct book chain, but not that one). His Ferrari gets towed so he has to lug his big cardboard cutout of himself home where he explains how he got swindled out of his fortune and we learn that Cage broke up with Abigail…
So, naturally, these two kooky guys break into her house to steal her employee ID tag, but she comes home early from a date with Phil Dunphy and it's awkward...
She's pissed about him breaking in and stealing her shit but then allows them to look at the document because Cage says she can have a certain piece of furniture in their breakup agreement. Their splitting up is a very convenient way to essentially recreate the exact same dynamic of the first movie (I will be saying some variation of this A LOT during the recap).
So the plot of this one is Cage has to prove his great-great-gramps didn't help plot to kill Lincoln. And that is certainly “a plot.”
Meanwhile, FBI man Harvey Keitel is back and he is very suspicious of Ed Harris and why he waited so long to come forward with this missing page of the diary.
Their first stop on this epic adventure is the Statue of Liberty, but the smaller one in Paris. It’s the same bit as the first movie: Cage figures out the second clue in real time with some help from a couple dopey French cops…
They go to Buckingham Palace where Cage has a nice fake freakout to cause a distraction. His British accent is pretty good…
And by "pretty good" I mean horrible, though that's the point. They find the next clue on a chunk of wood under a desk at Buckingham Palace. This is 100% the same formula as the first, subbing out American landmarks for international ones. At a certain point watching these characters figure out puzzles and riddles in real time gets kind of old. But the trick of these movies, if they work at all, is packaging it with witty dialogue and high octane action. I get it. However I don't think we needed two of them.
Before the obligatory car chase sequence, we get the dumbest "the steering wheel is on the other side of the car in England" joke…
It’s actually a very good car chase, though, featuring a keg delivery truck losing its cargo on the tight streets of London…
In one of the stupider moves of the franchise, Cage holds up a picture of the desk piece at a traffic camera when he runs a red light, asks Riley to hack into the police computer to get the picture and then throws the block of wood into the river in order to end the car chase. Ed Harris’s goons fish it out but they take the picture, which features native American markings, back to Jon Voight to examine.
It turns out only Cage’s mom can decipher it because she's an expert on this subject (of course) and a sequel needs new characters, in this case: the one and only Hellen Mirren, who ex-husband Voight hasn't seen in 30 years. They immediately get into an asinine argument…
They figure out that this is only half a clue, which will unlock a map to a “city of gold,” and they need to find the other half which is under the President's desk in the Oval Office. Sure.
The Ed Harris crew figure out it's only half a map too so they are just gonna follow Cage again because they are stupid and he is smart and that's how the plot works. They go to the White House during the annual Easter egg hunt and Cage gets in a fight with a child…
They meet up with Phil Dunphy who works there and that's their ticket in. Abigail distracts Phil with her big boobs while Cage does the desk puzzle.
The White House desk plank is missing but they find a symbol that represents the titular "book of secrets" which Riley is an expert on, of course.
Cage meets up with Keitel to get the real skinny on the secret book (because he knows this how?). He tells him that the only person who knows the location of the book is the current President, as it is handed down to each new commander-in-chief. And Cage comes up with a genius idea…
That's right. They're gonna kidnap the President of the United States!
The President, played by the great Bruce Greenwood — who is very presidenty despite being Canadian — is jamming to a private Lyle Lovett concert at Mt. Vernon. Voight poses as a fisherman causing a distraction and Cage poses as a debonair party guest, AKA himself. He introduces himself as himself, the great treasure hunter Benjamin Franklin Gates, and he and President Greenwood to go on an impromptu hunt in the cellar of Mt. Vernon.
He traps the Pres in a secret room and confronts him about the book of secrets. The secret service agents freak out about this.
I kept thinking about the fact that the only reason they're doing this is because they were offended that someone thought Cage’s distant relative maybe helped plot the Lincoln assassination. The President also thinks about this, but Cage explains why the President should help him.…
Seems logical to me.
The President tells him that the book is just chilling out in the open at the Library of Congress and he gives him the Dewey decimal number?!? He also tells Cage that if he doesn't find the treasure he'll be arrested for kidnapping the President but if he does? No biggie. They're cool. Water on the bridge.
They go to the Library and the President hitchhikes back to the party with a trucker lol.
They find the book in a hidden compartment on the shelf. They skip through the pages revealing the truth about Area 51 and the Kennedy assassination to get to the stuff they need. They find a picture of the missing plank from the Oval Office desk and figure out that the location of the city of gold is Mt. Rushmore. He sends the pic to Voight (via some of the earliest flip phone photo sharing ever that Voight struggles to understand) to take to his mom Hellen Mirren to decode. Unfortunately his dad's cell is bugged by Ed Harris and they get to Helen before the good guys can.
They kidnap her and take her to Mt. Rushmore where they meet Cage and friends. Ed Harris has another part of the clue (a series of riddles) and Cage convinces him to work together to find the treasure. The first riddle suggests they need to sprinkle bottled water over some rocks near the monument in order to activate an eagle symbol. They do their manic “figuring it out” routine before Harris unveils the next riddle which leads to this…
They go into the secret cave and it's full of Indiana Jones booby traps just like the first movie's climax…
They're trapped inside the cave and another Indiana Jones trick throws Riley, Abigail, Harris and cage down onto a giant teetering scale…
It's corny as hell, but Justin Bartha (Riley) is pretty good at providing constant comic relief…
In the next room of the cave, Cage lights some streams of fire (again: just like in Part 1!) while the elderly folk and former spouses play Tarzan and make out in a different part of the underground cavern…
Then both parties arrive at the city of gold at the same time and Ed Harris apologizes? OK…
Next, water starts pouring in everywhere and they find a secret door that someone has to keep open while the others escape. It's a very chaotic scene with the water rising and for some reason Ed Harris sacrifices himself even though just moments earlier he threatened to kill Abigail with a knife…
Cage calls Keitel and the authorities bring them to the President and he upholds his end of the very dumb bargain…
The happy ending includes Riley finally meeting a babe who’s read his book and — in an absolutely shocking twist — Cage getting back together with Abigail as fireworks go off over Mt. Rushmore. My condolences to Mr. Phil Dunphy.
In the postscript, the President also gives back Riley's Ferrari because that was a thing he knew about? He immediately crashes it like an idiot…
And that's that. They actually set up sequel bait for a third film and wouldn't you know it, but as of today it looks like they are still probably on track for producing it over 15 years later. People are still writing about it at least.
These movies are fine. This one is redundant and a total rehash thematically but it's probably just as fun. They could make dozens of these — as there's no shortage of history they couldn't latch onto and morph into a series of wild goose chase adventures — but it doesn't mean that they should. Still, I don't begrudge anybody for liking or even loving these silly movies. I find them amusing enough and I appreciate that they are definitely CAGE vehicles (with several big names in the cast, just look at that movie poster) even if I can't ignore the diminishing returns.
CHRONOLOGICALLY
⫷ MOVIE #1,228 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,230 ⫸
⫷ MOVIE #1,228 - (YOU ARE HERE) - MOVIE #1,230 ⫸
National Treasure: Book of Secrets is a 2007 American action-adventure film directed by Jon Turteltaub and produced by Jerry Bruckheimer. It is a sequel to the 2004 film National Treasure and is the second film of the National Treasure franchise. The film stars Nicolas Cage in the lead role, Jon Voight, Harvey Keitel, Ed Harris, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, Bruce Greenwood and Helen Mirren. The film premiered in New York City on December 13, 2007, and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures released it in North America on December 21, 2007. Like its predecessor, it received mixed reviews from critics who compared it unfavorably with the original, and was a commercial success, grossing $459 million worldwide. It was released on December 21, 2007.
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