NATIONAL TREASURE 2: BOOK OF SECRETS (2007)
Tagline: Nope
(Action, Adventure, Mystery) [PG]
I'm gonna kidnap him. I'm gonna kidnap the President of the United States.
This one is the second installment in the NATIONAL TREASURE series. I say series even though there were just 2 movies because Nicolas Cage is nuts (in the best way possible) and might sign up for any role at any time. After Benjamin Franklin Gates discovers the treasure of the Knight’s Templar he’s loaded out of his mind (money wise), but decides to go after the missing pages of John Wilkes Booth’s diary which is said to have contained the location of a lost city made of gold. There is another treasure hunter trying to stay ahead of Gates who is trying to clear his family’s name (Gates is also trying to do the same). Gates once again has the help of Riley and Abigail along with his parents.
First off, this is a pretty good action flick, but for me, it does miss some of the grandeur of the first movie. The location of the treasure is a bit more on the “wow, that doesn’t make any sense” side. There is also a scene in here where Gates actually kidnaps the President Of The United States to get to one of the clues. It seems like no matter what he did after that, he was going to somehow end up in jail for life.
The acting is a strong point with Nicolas Cage, Diane Kruger, Justin Bartha, and Jon Voight all reprising their roles from the first film. We also get the addition of Ed Harris who is probably best known for THE TRUMAN SHOW, he was also the creepy leader of the train in SNOWPIERCER. We also get Helen Mirren as Franklin Gates's mom. Helen has been in Hollywood since the freakin ’60s.
Cinematically this one gets a bit more extensive in the final act than the last film. There is some awesome character development from a few of the characters and that also gives the movie more depth. I didn’t like the overall storyline as much as the original, but the production overall makes this a really solid follow-up as well as a stand-alone film.
If you read my reviews you know I hate realism where it's clearly implied there isn't going to be any, but part of the charm of these films was that they were able to make it sound like if you took the real historical clues they would all lead to something. This one kind of makes you feel like any time you want you can just go lead the President off into a cave and play chess with him and not even get arrested, because a Federal crime isn’t a Federal crime unless the President hates you. Wait a minute… I guess this thing is just as close to reality as the first one.
Overall I have to give this one a 4 out of 7. It’s good but feels like they went a bit too far with some of the plot points to make it even less realistic than the first movie.
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