It should come as no surprise that the number one box office film for three weeks running is National Treasure: Book of Secrets. As I indicated in my recent DVD review, the National Treasure franchise is a product designed to perform a function, which it does admirably to the tastes of the audience, otherwise it would have died after the first week, and not generated good word of mouth. Screenwriters should study the films. NT is a machine. It’s processed, uniform, homogenized. It’s not a movie Quentin Tarantino would like, much less Bela Tarr. But the most important thing to remember about it is that like its predecessor NT2 is a kid’s film, geared to people 10 years old or so. That the rest of the American audience goes with this flow is emblematic of a general retreat to all things childish, be it literature (which is more popular with adult readers than literary fiction), clothing styles, comfort food, or pets. National Treasure is the closet thing to anime that Americans will approve, with its busy story in which one thing leads to another bigger, better, louder thing on and on and on seemingly without resolution.

NT2 begins with a laborious flashback that remains unclear for the rest of the movie even as numerous characters attempt to explain it. In essence Ben Gates’s great grandfather was asked by Lincoln conspirators to decipher something, but catching on quickly tried to burn it. Instead of being heralded as a hero, he is in contemporary times accused of being a co-conspirator. Ben Gates’s goal is to “clear” his ancestor. To do this he must rob his own house, case the Paris version of the Statue of Liberty, rob Buckingham Palace, invade and rob the Oval Office, kidnap (temporarily) the President of the United States, and find a hidden artifact in the Library of Congress, all before ending up at Mount Rushmore, which turns out to be a physical “front” for the lost city of gold.

Before all this happens we are re-introduced to the characters and shown what happened to them in the intervening time frame between pictures. Ben and Abigail have broken up; Riley the sidekick has had his spoils from the last adventure (a sports car) repossessed; in addition, he is not accorded the esteem he feels is his due for his part in NT1, which he has recounted in a book. This is all false conflict so that, as in a TV series after a cliffhanging season ender that announces change (House, Without a Trace), things can go back to the way they were. In fact, you’ve probably forgotten that these characters were even in the first film. In addition, a new character is added, Ben’s mother (Helen Mirren), so that Ben’s dad (Jon Voight) can also have a joyous reconciliation amid danger. The whole movie is about reconciliation: Ben and his gal, mom and dad, villain and hero, sidekick and his lowly lot in life.

If the previous film cited Indiana Jones throughout, this one nods to the James Bond series. The landscape is international, car chases are common, the finale takes place in a huge ornate chamber, and Ben even hides a tuxedo under a scuba suit. The villain is not dastardly, however. In the previous film, the villain was an oddly human and complex figure. Here it is Ed Harris, whose southern accent comes and goes, who fuels the enterprise and then sits back to watch as Ben does all the work. Harris’s Mitch Wilkinson is harder but less interesting. In fact he is so irrelevant that he drops out of the picture for the longest time. Three of the lead actors have Oscars, but this is not the kind of film that requires thespian skills so much as the ability to understand the second unit director’s instructions.

The script, fashioned by numerous hands that include Cormac and Marianne Wibberley, Gregory Poirier, Ted Elliott, Terry Rossio, Jim Kouf, Oren Aviv and Charles Segars, has some good moments, such as Ben’s riff on the use of the word “So” in tense marital discussions, and the dialogue in which Ben discovers that “Someone else is after the treasure,” to which Riley replies, “Of course someone else is after the treasure. It’s axiomatic of treasure hunting.” There is also a clever use of use of traffic camera for retaining a clue. And Bruce Greenwood, the Canadian actor who has already played JFK, is his usual agreeable self as a fantasy liberal president out to embody a message about believing anew in government by noble people.

The book in question is a diary passed down from president to president in which they reveal national secrets such as what really happened in Area 51 and who killed Kennedy. The movie goes so fast that it never occurs to you to wonder why a sitting President would need to know all these things. And wouldn’t the Queen have a bigger book? In any case, they don’t find one in Buckingham Palace. The real book of secrets, however, is the list of tropes that the screenwriters use or finagle to keep the film fresh while relying on tried and true tropes. It’s a national book of secrets that isn’t so secret.

This entry was posted on Monday, December 31st, 2007 at 9:53 pm and is filed under Reel Politique - Film columnist DK Holm. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.