Movie Review: National Treasure - Book of Secrets

I have seen only two movies of Nicholas Cage and I liked one (Con Air) and hated the other (Leaving Las Vegas). Since I didn’t have too much interest in his movies, I was not too sure what to expect when my friends dragged me to watch National Treasure II – Book of Secrets. But I was pleasantly surprised by the mature handling of the plot and the excellent screenplay in this movie. Cage fitted his role as Ben Gates, an archaeologist and treasure hunter very well and done complete justice. His bickering parents (Jon Voight and Helen Mirren), best friend IT whiz Justin Bartha, and girlfriend Diane Kruger have done their bit to make the movie engrossing and at times very funny too. The bad guy, played by Ed Harris actually helps Cage unearth an ancient City of Gold hidden right under Mount Rushmore.

The movie starts off with the bad guy accusing Ben Gates’ ancestors of having a hand in the plot of assassinate Abraham Lincoln and then one thing leads to the other and becomes a grand global adventure. Nicholas Cage travels at will to anywhere to everywhere and gets access to anything under the sun. He steals a wooden scroll from the Queen’s desk in the Buckingham Palace, rifles through the American president’s desk in Oval office and swipes the brown diary from the Library of Congress too! And the wonder of all wonders is that he never gets caught. Sounds too fancy, doesn’t it?

The plot of the movie is somewhat like an amalgamation of few of the older movies. Some of the clues to find the treasure are surely some adaptation and modifications of the clues in the 1969 movie Mackenna’s Gold. The high tech stuff which Bartha so slickly uses to give Cage the access to every security ridden place on this earth including the Buckingham Palace and White House look somewhat similar to the ones in The Italian Job (2003).

But then some adaptations and good performances and of course great locations make National Treasure: Book of Secrets a highly entertaining movie and worth your money. But let me warn you, it is definitely not worth watching more than once.