My wife and I went to see the recent Nicolas Cage sequel a couple days ago. If you haven't seen it yet, and you liked the first one, then I would definitely...
...go rent the first one and watch it again. See, the problem is that the whole movie I'm thinking, "I've seen this already". I liked the first National Treasure. I thought it caught the spirit of our nation and did a good job creating a mythos of the Masons and our founding fathers. The second movie didn't have that spirit. It was simply a rehash with a different fake legend.
Now, I'm not trying to hold the movies up to a high standard. I mean, they're little more than DaVinci Code light. You get all the conspiracy without the religious controversy. Of course its all made up, but still.
But the movie didn't have to suck. And suck it did, about an hour into the two hour movie my head was resting on my wife's shoulder in boredom, much the same posture I had watching Eragon. There is one thing, however, that I think would have helped the movie. The thing that got me interested in the first movie was the involvement of the Masons and how they hid symbols in many aspects of American history to provide a map to a treasure. This movie involved the KGC, a Southern extremist group that (in the movie at least) helped plot the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. After that, though, the KGC gets forgotten, in fact, I can't remember what the letters stand for. If the movie would have built on that group and given them a fictional history, maybe it would have been more engaging.
But too much was a cheap repeat. Even down to the part where the new treasure is illuminated using a torch to light a pathway of gas (which never seems to burn out).
Book of Secrets brings back all the main characters, Nicolas Cage as Ben Gates, John Voight as his father, Justin Bartha as his nerdy sidekick Riley Poole, Diane Kruger as Abigail Chase, and Harvey Keitel as FBI agent Sadusky. New additions are Helen Mirren as Cage's mother, and Ed Harris as the quasi-bad guy that gets redeemed at the end, kind of. Unfortunately the bad guy was no where near as good as Sean Bean in the last movie.
Book of Secrets does set up a third movie at the end, a movie I'll see on DVD, if at all. Book of Secrets is rated PG and is out in theaters now.
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