Today I went to see National Treasure: Book of Secrets with Sean, Elsa and Tessa. It was an enjoyable movie, thought the Villain really didn’t have enough motivation, his entire plot to discover the lost city of gold called Cyabola by forcing Ben Gates into the hunt by implicating his great-grandfather in the assassination of Abraham Lincoln (how did he forge that page anyway?) was supposedly fueled by a desire merely for fame and to be remembered by history. It even turns out the he is not really a bad guy in the end and he sacrifices himself to save the others when earlier in the movie he had been trying very hard to have them killed. There is no change of heart, just a (rather contrived) situation that required him to sacrifice himself, really only so the main characters could survive. His character is very contradictory and his motivation isn’t nearly strong enough to get him to do what he did.
Secondly, the relationship issues between Ben Gates and Abigail were highly contrived, there was no real journey from “I hate you, stay out of my house” and arguing all the time, back to “oh its good, you can move back in now” other than the thrill of the treasure hunt. If their relationship is going to be founded only on the high of the treasure hunt, than their relationship should never have existed in the first place and it is no wonder that they didn’t work out.
The plot itself was rather contrived, of course, but that is rather expected. It centers around events that the writers obviously thought would be interesting, such as breaking into Buckingham Palace, making out in the Oval Office and kidnapping the President. It made for a fun, if unbelievable story. Really, how in the world did a solid-gold Aztec city make its way to Mt. Rushmore? And why was Gate’s great-grandfather deciphering a cipher that leads to clues that haven’t been created yet?
However, the biggest problem I had with it was that it presents a strong revisionist view of history, portraying Lincoln as the hero-president who unified the States, rather than the man who almost tore the states apart and single-handedly destroyed States Rights for all eternity
The acting was quite solid (you can’t really expect much less from Nicholas Cage) and the writing brought about some fun situations and good dialog. All in all it was a fun movie, but quite contrived and utterly unbelievable.
